Gene Variation Affects Brain Cell Development

Johns Hopkins researchers have begun to connect the dots between a schizophrenia-linked genetic variation and its effect on the developing brain. As they report July 3 in the journal Cell Stem Cell, their experiments show that the loss of a particular gene alters the  skeletons of developing brain cells, which in turn disrupts the orderly layers those cells would normally form.

“This is an important step toward understanding what physically hap…