NATURE: Vol. 523

FIRST ROBUST GENETIC LINKS TO DEPRESSION EMERGE Discoveries energize hunt for genes connected to mental illness. 

By HEIDI LEDFORD
July 16, 2015

Discoveries energize hunt for genes connected to mental illness.

No one was more surprised than Jonathan Flint when his project — an effort to find genetic sequences linked to depression — showed the first hint of success 18 months ago. He knew the odds were slim: a study of 9,000 people with major depressive disorder had come up empty1 , and Flint had heard rumours that a follow-up analysis of 17,000 people had also met with disappointment. “I thought, ‘There’s no way,’” says the geneticist from the University of Oxford, UK, whose study had by that point analysed only 5,303 people with depression. Read More