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Scientists Launch Major Study Into Depression

Depression will affect up to 25% of the population at some point in their lives. It also has been shown to have a strong genetic component. For example, if one of your close family members has depression, your chance of also being a sufferer is three to four times the general population risk.

Now University of Aberdeen researchers have joined forces with the University of Liverpool and the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London to try to find the genetic causes of depression.

They believe the answers could lie with short DNA sequences which act as 'genetic switches' controlling key genes in an area of the brain that influences mood.

These switches ensure that certain genes are only used in the correct parts of the brain at the proper times and in the right dose. Any changes in these can cause imbalances in the amount of critical proteins in the brain that may increase susceptibility to depression.

Unlike genes, little is know of these switches, technically known as enhancers, because up until now they have been very hard to find.

Recently, however, it was found that these switches were so important in evolution that they have been kept, nearly unchanged, through hundreds of millions of years from a time before the dinosaurs.

Dr Alasdair MacKenzie, Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, and the scientist leading the study, explained: "Only by comparing the genomes of species as diverse as mice, marsupials and birds has it been possible to identify these switches as, in many cases, they are located far away from the genes they control. The distances involved are as surprising as having a light bulb in London with the switch for controlling it in Liverpool."

Comparing the genomes of different species has helped them to identify the switches responsible for controlling genes known to be involved in depression, as well as addiction, obesity and inflammatory pain.



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