Beyond developmental expression, understanding the function and determining the genes that are regulated by ZNF804a either directly through promoter/enhancer occupancy or indirectly through downstream molecular pathways is relevant to our understanding of the function of this gene and how it may associate with SZ. Regardless of the expression pattern observed in SZ, our data and others suggest that transcription downstream of ZNF804a is sensitive to the expression level of ZNF804a [11]. Using a whole-genome microarray approach, Hill et al. [11] showed RNAi knockdown of ZNF804a in human neural progenitor cell line resulted in altered expression of 151 unique genes, however this study could not ascertain if knockdown of ZNF804a produced a direct or indirect effect on gene expression. Our ChIP results expand our understanding of ZNF804a function by providing evidence of ZNF804a directly regulating transcription through promoter/enhancer occupancy. It will be useful in future experiments to expand these results by using a genome-wide ChIP sequencing approach. Collectively, these results strongly suggest ZNF804a expression level is a candidate mechanism for conferring risk.
