Abstract

Drug addiction can be defined as the compulsive seeking and taking of a drug despite adverse consequences. Although addiction involves many psychological and social factors, it also represents a biological process: the effects of repeated drug exposure on a vulnerable brain. The sequencing of the human and other mammalian genomes will help us to understand the biology of addiction by enabling us to identify both genes that contribute to individual risk for addiction and those through which drugs cause addiction. We illustrate this potential impact by searching a draft sequence of the human genome for genes related to desensitization of receptors that mediate the actions of drugs of abuse on the nervous system.

1. Department of Psychiatry, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, Texas 75390-9070, USA
2. National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, Computational Biology Branch, Building 45, Room 6AN12J, 45 Center Drive, MSC 6510, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-6510, USA

Correspondence to: Eric J. Nestler¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to E.J.N. (e-mail: Email: eric.nestler@utsouthwestern.edu).