Brain gains

FOR decades scientists have been trying to understand schizophrenia, a distressing disorder that afflicts one in a hundred people. Its destructive symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, muddled thoughts and changes in behaviour. The best drugs offer little more than the ability to target symptoms. There is presently no hope of a cure because its ultimate cause has long been a mystery.

Schizophrenia is known to run in families, so it has always been thought that genes might shed light on the origins of the disease. But the genetics have proved harder to unpick than anyone imagined. It is only now, 16 years after the human genome was first sequenced, that scientists have homed in on the relevant genes.