Phospholipase C beta2 (PLCB2) is differentially expressed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of patients with psychotic disorders.
We mined two microarray datasets (published or public) (1, 2) to identify the most significant changes in gene expression in the brains of patients with psychotic disorders. We found that isoform 2 of phospholipase C beta (PLCB2) was among the genes most differentially expressed in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) of patients with schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar disorder (1). In a separate dataset (2), PLCB2 was again among the genes whose expression changed most significantly when comparing parvalbumin-positive layer 3 neurons from the DLPFC between patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and control subjects. Multiple studies have documented dysregulated PLCB1 expression in the brains of patients with schizophrenia, including in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (3-6). These data suggest that PLCB2 expression may also be perturbed in the brains of patients with psychotic disorders.