1. ¹Departament de Formació i Investigació, Hospital Psiquiàtric Universitari Institut Pere Mata, Reus, Spain
2. ²Unitat de Psiquiatria i Psicologia Mèdica, Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain
3. ³Departament de Bioquímica i Biotecnologia, Facultat de Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
4. ⁴Centre de Recerca Biomèdica, Hospital Universitari Sant Joan de Reus, Reus, Spain

Correspondence: Dr L Martorell, Departament de Formació i Investigació, Hospital Psiquiàtric Universitari Institut Pere Mata, Ctra. de l'institut Pere Mata s/n, 43206 Reus, Spain. Tel: +34 977 759 338; Fax: +34 977 759 322; E-mail: lourdes.martorell@urv.net

Received 21 April 2005; Revised 30 November 2005; Accepted 10 February 2006; Published online 15 March 2006.

Abstract

The impaired mitochondrial function hypothesis in schizophrenia is based on evidence of altered brain metabolism, morphology, biochemistry and gene expression. Mitochondria have their own genome, which is needed to synthesize some of the subunits of the respiratory chain enzymes. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is maternally inherited and we observed an excess of maternal transmission of schizophrenia in a set of parent–offspring affected pairs. We therefore hypothesized that mutations in the mtDNA may contribute to the complex genetic basis of schizophrenia. The entire mtDNA of six schizophrenic patients with an apparent maternal transmission of the disease was sequenced and compared to the reference sequence. We have identified 50 variants and among these six have not been previously reported. Three of them were missense variants: MTCO2 7750C>A, MTATP6 8857G>A and MTND4 12096T>A. These were maternally inherited because they were also present in the mtDNA of their respective schizophrenic mothers and none of them were found in 95 control individuals. The MTND4 12096T>A (Leu446His) is a heteroplasmic variant present in five of the six mother–offspring patient pairs that triggers a non-conservative substitution in the ND4 subunit of complex I. Sequence alignment of 110 ND4 peptides from all eukaryotic kingdoms shows that only hydrophobic amino acids are found in this position. Moreover, leucine was conserved or substituted by an isoleucine in all mammalian species. This indicates that the presence of histidine could affect complex I activity in patients with schizophrenia.