Reconstruction and Analysis of Gene Networks of Human Neurotransmitter Systems Reveal Genes with Contentious Manifestation for Anxiety, Depression, and Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

Background: The study of the biological basis of anxiety, depression, and intellectual disabilities in humans is one of the most actual problems of modern neurophysiology. Of particular interest is the study of complex interactions between molecular genetic factors, electrophysiological properties of the nervous system, and the behavioral characteristics of people. The neurobiological understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders requires not only the identification of genes that play a role in the molecular mechanisms of the occurrence and course of diseases, but also the understanding of complex interactions that occur between these genes. A systematic study of such interactions obviously contributes to the development of new methods of diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of disorders, as the orientation to allele variants of individual loci is not reliable enough, because the literature describes a number of genes, the same alleles of which can be associated with different, sometimes extremely different variants of phenotypic traits, depending on the genetic background, of their carriers, habitat, and other factors. Results: In our study, we have reconstructed a series of gene networks (in the form of protein–protein interactions networks, as well as networks of transcription regulation) to build a model of the influence of complex interactions of environmental factors and genetic risk factors for intellectual disability, depression, and other disorders in human behavior. Conclusion: A list of candidate genes whose expression is presumably associated with environmental factors and has potentially contentious manifestation for behavioral and neurological traits is identified for further experimental verification.

Keywords

• intellectual disabilities
• depression
• neurotransmitter
• gene network
• SNP