More encouragingly, however, despite the rarity of these events, we nonetheless replicated several specific regions from previous studies that were not known to be recurrent schizophrenia-associated CNVs, including those affecting APBA2 and the surrounding region [40]. Additionally, we have implicated new regions, including a large deletion at 16p13.11-p12.4 that may be an important risk factor for other neuropsychiatric conditions. This region also intimates at the possibility that while patients may have different genetic contributors, some of the different events may point towards the same pathway, given that the 16p region includes a gene known to encode a binding partner of DISC1, a gene with confirmed involvement in schizophrenia. These observations suggest that a full catalogue of rare determinants of schizophrenia could identify a number of specific genomic regions or events that unite a fraction of patients as having the same or similar underlying causes. These subgroups of patients can be further investigated to see if the genetic contributors can elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying particular symptoms or drug-response phenotypes.
