Convergent genomic and pharmacological evidence of PI3K/GSK3 signaling alterations in neurons from schizophrenia patients

From Stertz et al 2021 "Human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) allow for the establishment of brain cellular models of psychiatric disorders that account for a patient’s genetic background. Here, we conducted an RNA-sequencing profiling study of hiPSC-derived cell lines from schizophrenia (SCZ) subjects, most of which are from a multiplex family, from the population isolate of the Central Valley of Costa Rica. hiPSCs, neural precursor cells, and cortical neurons derived from six healthy controls and seven SCZ subjects were generated using standard methodology. Transcriptome from these cells was obtained using Illumina HiSeq 2500, and differential expression analyses were performed using DESeq2 (|fold change|>1.5 and false discovery rate < 0.3), in patients compared to controls. We identified 454 differentially expressed genes in hiPSC-derived neurons, enriched in pathways including phosphoinositide 3-kinase/glycogen synthase kinase 3 (PI3K/GSK3) signaling, with serum-glucocorticoid kinase 1 (SGK1), an inhibitor of glycogen synthase kinase 3β, as part of this pathway. We further found that pharmacological inhibition of downstream effectors of the PI3K/GSK3 pathway, SGK1 and GSK3, induced alterations in levels of neurite markers βIII tubulin and fibroblast growth factor 12, with differential effects in patients compared to controls. While demonstrating the utility of hiPSCs derived from multiplex families to identify significant cell-specific gene network alterations in SCZ, these studies support a role for disruption of PI3K/GSK3 signaling as a risk factor for SCZ." This dataset includes Samples from the manuscript "Convergent genomic and pharmacological evidence of PI3K/GSK3 signaling alterations in neurons from schizophrenia patients" by Stertz et al 2021 published in Neuropsychopharmacology. In total, raw fastq for 13 Neural Progenitor Cells, 11 Cortical Neurons, 4 pooled induced pluripotent stem cell lines, and 4 pooled lymphoblastoid cell lines are uploaded and have processed counts provided. These counts were used to generate the conclusions in the manuscript.