Turning Strains into Strengths for Understanding Psychiatric Disorders

There is a paucity in the development of new mechanistic insights and therapeutic approaches for treating psychiatric disease. One of the major challenges is reflected in the growing consensus that risk for these diseases is not determined by a single gene, but rather is polygenic, arising from the action and interaction of multiple genes. Canonically, experimental models in mice have been designed to ascertain the relative contribution of a single gene to a disease by systematic manipulation (e.g. mutation or deletion) of a known candidate gene. Because these studies have been largely carried out using inbred isogenic mouse strains, in which there is no (or very little) genetic diversity among subjects, it is difficult to identify unique allelic variants, gene modifiers, and epigenetic factors that strongly affect the nature and severity of these diseases. Here we review various methods that take advantage of existing genetic diversity or that increase genetic variance in mouse models to (1) strengthen conclusions of single gene function; (2) model diversity among human populations; and (3) dissect complex phenotypes that arise from the actions of multiple genes.