Anormal presinaptik fonksiyon ile ilişkili genlerden sinapsin 2'nin metilasyon durumunun şizofreni ile bağlantısının araştırılması

Although schizophrenia is one of the public health problems, it is a neuropsychiatric disease whose etiology is not exactly understood. With the development of genetics, some factors that are effective in inheritance of diseases but not caused by changes in DNA sequence were discovered and these factors were called epigenetic modifications. DNA methylation is an important phenomenon that has an effect on rising of abnormal phenotypes in many cases. The most common type of DNA methylation is addition of a methyl group to the 5th position of the cytosine nucleotide of CG dinucleotides found in CpG islands. Investigation of the association between DNA methylation and schizophrenia is important for elucidating the hereditary basis of schizophrenia. Like other neuropsychiatric disorders, synapse-related genes are important candidate genes for schizophrenia. The results of previous association studies between the SYN2 gene and schizophrenia, confirm that the SYN2 gene is a strong candidate gene for schizophrenia. In the light of this scientific information, methylation patterns of 3 different CpG regions in promoter of SYN2 gene were compared between healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. 33 healthy controls and 39 schizophrenia patients were included in this study. The study was performed using pyrosequencing method. As a result of the statistical analysis, it was confirmed that there is a significant relationship between the methylation pattern of the SYN2 gene and schizophrenia. In addition to detecting significant DNA methylation differences in the 2nd and 3rd CpG regions, significant differences were also found in the average methylation ratio.