Gene expression profiling as functional readout of rodent models for psychiatric disorders

Gene expression changes are well documented in depression and schizophrenia and might contribute to the pathologic phenotype associated with these disorders. On this basis, the investigation of transcriptional changes is extensively employed at the preclinical level in order to identify and characterize genes causally related to a pathologic condition. Key information can be achieved with respect to functional alterations in selected brain structures and to anatomical networks and systems that are altered in mental disorders. Furthermore, such analyses are used to investigate the impact of pharmacologic intervention in mechanisms that are significantly impaired in the disease or that might contribute to their therapeutic effectiveness. In this review, we will primarily discuss target approach analyses as a valuable instrument to address key questions in experimental work. We will focus on a few paradigmatic examples, such as the modulation of the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor and the regulation of inducible early genes and the functional implication of such analyses. We will also briefly discuss genome-wide approaches that aim at identifying, in an unbiased manner, all the genes differentially affected under a given experimental setting.