Schizophrenia (SZ) is a common debilitating psychiatric disorder which affects approximately 1% of the world population and accounts for a significant socio-economic burden (Rössler et al., 2005). The disease is characterized by the presence of positive symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia, and negative symptoms, such as social withdrawal and flattened affect; SZ is also marked by cognitive deficits such as disorganized thoughts and difficulty concentrating (Barnhill, 2013). The symptoms may appear in a variety of constellations. Additionally, individuals with SZ have a high risk of suicide, high prevalence of substance abuse, and a high rate of homelessness (Rössler et al., 2005). Despite being recognized as early as 1896 (Rössler et al., 2005), disease etiology has remained elusive. The rate of heritability has been estimated to be around 80%, but the concordance rate among monozygotic twins is around 50% (Cardno et al., 1999), indicating that genetic contribution alone is insufficient to fully account for disease risk. Moreover, genome wide associated studies (GWAS) by the Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (2014) have identified over one hundred loci associated with the disease, consistent with the clinical heterogeneity of the disorder.
