Systematic screening for mutations in the human N-methyl-D-aspartate 1 gene in schizophrenic patients from the German population

Evidence for a dysfunction of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) type of ionotropic glutamate receptors in schizophrenic patients, comes from neurochemical and clinical pharmacologic data. Therefore, the NMDAR1 gene can be regarded as an interesting candidate gene for schizophrenia. Several groups have tried to identify variants of this gene in schizophrenic patients in different, however not in German, populations. We sought to identify sequence changes of potential functional relevance in genomic DNA from 46 German unrelated schizophrenic patients by means of single-strand conformation analysis. No mutations of likely functional relevance were observed. We identified two synonymous coding Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (cSNPs) in exons 6 and 7, and two SNPs in exon-flanking intronic sequences. Genotype distribution of these four SNPs was not significantly different between schizophrenic patients and controls. Our results suggest that the NMDAR1 subunit is not frequently involved in the development of schizophrenia in the German population.