Milestone Chinese Discovery in Identifying Depression

China Central University’s Professor CHEN Jianguo, and China Medical Academy of Science’s Professor XU Qi, together with their team, have made a milestone discovery in establishing the genetic factors which cause depression. From over 5,000 samples from healthy females and 5,000 samples from females diagnosed with depression, the team has discovered two important genetic variations (molecular variations), both of which exist on Chromosome 10. Chromosome 10 represents between 4 and 4.5 percent of the total DNA in cells and contains 700 to 800 genes that provide instructions for making proteins.

This is the first time that Chinese scientists have discovered process-sensitive genes and genetic variations. This work provides bio-markers for early clinical diagnoses and new targets for drug development. The two professors’ work has been published in Nature, the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry, and in Biological Psychiatry.