Failure to Support Both Akt-1 and Zdhhc8 as Candidate Genes for Schizophrenia in the Cohort of Taiwan

Abstract

Introduction: V-akt murine thymoma viral oncogene homolog 1( AKT1) and Zinc finger, DHHC domain containing 8 (ZDHHC8) are two separate genes located at chromosome 14q32.32 and chromosome 22q11.21 regions, respectively. The AKT1 has been known involving in the regulatory mechanisms of neuronal activity and the ZDHHC8 encodes a putative transmembrane palmitoyltransferase may cause prepulse inhibition deficit in genetic knockout mice. Both these genes have recently been reported with single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers significantly associated with schizophrenia. Methods : In order to test if these SNP markers associated with schizophrenia, we had genotyped five AKT1 SNP markers SNP1 ( rs3803300), SNP2 (rs1130214), SNP3 (rs3730358), SNP4 (rs 2498799) and SNP5 (rs2494732), and two ZDHHC8 SNP markers rs 1633445 and rs175174, with the MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry in 218 co-affected schizophrenia Taiwan families. Results: None of these SNP markers showed significant association with schizophrenia in either the single locus or the two-SNP block haplotypes association analyses using either the program of Transmit or the program of FBAT. Conclusions: We conclude that both AKT1 and ZDHHC 8 in these seven genotyped SNP markers fail to support them as candidates for schizophrenia in the cohort of Taiwan.