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Psychiatric genetics: The brains of the family

Nature volume 454, pages 154–157 (2008)Cite this article

Does the difficulty in finding the genes responsible for mental illness reflect the complexity of the genetics or the poor definitions of psychiatric disorders? Alison Abbott reports.

Every family has its foibles, but this one has more than most. The first member came to researchers' attention in 1968 as part of a genetic survey of juvenile delinquents who had been admitted to Scottish detention centres. One boy carried a major 'translocation', in which a chunk of chromosome 11 had been switched with part of chromosome 1.

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  1. Alison Abbott
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Additional information

See Editorial, page 137. See also Correspondence — Mental health: maybe human troubles don’t fit into categories, Mental health: don’t overlook the environment and its risk factors, Mental health: drop ideological baggage in favour of best tools

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Catalogue of genome-wide association studies

Candidate gene list for schizophrenia

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Abbott, A. Psychiatric genetics: The brains of the family. Nature 454, 154–157 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454154a

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