COLLECTION OF DNA SAMPLES FROM PATIENTS W ITH ENDOGENIC PSYCHOSES - PERSPECTIVES OF ITS APPLICATION FOR MOLECULAR-GENETIC STUDIES IN PSYCHIATRY

A genetic study of psychiatric diseases meets a lot of difficulties be cause of incomplete penetrance, phenocopies, probable genetic heteroge neity. The progress in exploring of new effective markers and human ge nome mapping enables one to undertake a systematic search for alleles conferming susceptibility to manic depressive illness and schizophreni a. it is important therefore to have in one's disposal the collection of DNA samples appropriate for different aspects of molecular genetic study. The collection of DNA samples deposed in National Centre for Me ntal Health of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences includes DNA of inf ormative small-scaled families and a number of DNA from unrelated subj ects with manic-depressive illness, schizophrenia, schizoaffective dis orders. this collection may be used for linkage analysis, association and sib-pair studies and for detection of mutations responsible for me ntal diseases.