Schizophrenia (SZ) is a mental disorder affecting 0.3–0.7% of the population during their lifetime (van Os and Kapur, 2009). Typically having a post-adolescent onset, SZ is characterized by paranoia, confused speech and thought, delusions, hallucinations and social withdrawal. In a study of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in SZ, Koga and colleagues identified a missense mutation and two intronic mutations in BRM (Figure 2) (Koga et al., 2009). The missense mutation (p.Asp1546Glu) lowers the nuclear localization efficiency of BRM. Brm−/− mice display impaired social interaction and prepulse inhibition, and the gene expression changes in their prefrontal cortex is correlated with those seen in the postmortem prefrontal cortices of SZ patients. In addition, a BRM-centered interaction network involves 8 other SZ-associated genes (Loe-Mie et al., 2010), supporting the role of BRM perturbation in SZ.
