LiveScience.com reports on research into how a transcription factor called GATA1 may be involved in depression. The usual disclaimers about animal research (ethically problematic, and always of questionable relevance to humans) apply, but the idea that some epigenetic factors could be at play in some forms of depression makes sense.
A series of genes linked to the function of synapses, or the gaps between brain cells crucial for cell-to-cell communication, can be controlled by a single genetic "switch" that appears to be overproduced in the brains of people with depression, a new study finds.
"We show that circuits normally involved in emotion, as well as cognition, are disrupted when this single transcription factor is activated," study researcher Ronald Duman, a professor of psychiatry at Yale University, said in a statement.
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