Dr. Christa Hohoff & Univ.-Prof. Dr. Weiqi Zhang

Mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders or schizophrenia are suggested to have a complex, multifactorial aetiology with a high heritability. Different functional polymorphisms of candidate genes serve as susceptibility factors increasing the risk to develop a psychiatric disorder. Social and material environmental factors have the potential to modify this individual genetic make-up throughout life. Here, epigenetic mechanisms are under debate to be the underlying mediators between genes and environment.Projects embedded in this part of our research focus on identifying functional or positional candidate genes that play a role in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders (e.g. anxiety disorders, schizophrenic disorders) in humans. Further, we investigate the relevance of candidate genes and risk variants on interindividual variability of healthy probands to gain insights into, e.g., differing personality scores, differing responses to challenge tests or differing neurobiological parameters and processes. Among this different mouse models are used to analyze environment-induced gene expression profiles to identify new susceptibility genes and pathophysiological pathways, that might also play a role in human behaviour. Finally, we analyze epigenetic processes and their functional consequences to uncover the underlying mechanisms which differentially regulate susceptibility genes.