en
Eva-Christina Schulte
© Eva-Christina Schulte
Prof. Dr. Dr. Eva-Christina Schulte

Website

Affiliations
  • Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy & Institute of Human Genetics
Research topics
  • genetics
  • mental health disorder
We focus on the genetics of psychiatric disorders in clinical care and basic research. For many years, we have participated in international consortia to identify genetic risk factors for common, complex genetic diseases (e.g. Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, COVID-19 HGI). These have successfully established diverse genetic risk factors for many complex disorders. What is lacking, however, is an understanding of how these genetic risk factors lead to mental health disorders or infectious diseases. In our work, we seek to bridge this gap between the identification of genetic risk factors and their pathophysiologic consequences. To do so, methodologically, we use statistical genetics (association studies, polygenic risk scores), "omics" approaches (lipidomics), and high-throughput functional follow-ups (CRISPR screens). Phenotypically, we focus on, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia but also on transdiagnostic approaches as well as infectious disease-related phenotypes.
Selected publications

Schulte EC*, Kousi M*, Tan PL, Tilch E, Knauf F, Lichtner P, Trenkwalder C, Högl B, Frauscher B, Berger K, Fietze I, Hornyak M, Oertel WH, Bachmann CG, Zimprich A, Peters A, Gieger C, Meitinger T, Müller-Myhsok B, Katsanis N, Winkelmann J (2014) Targeted resequencing and systematic in vivo functional testing identifies rare variants in MEIS1 as significant contributors to restless legs syndrome. Am J Hum Genet 95:85-95.

Niemi MEK, Karjalainen J, Liao RG, …, Schulte EC, et al (2021) Mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19. Nature 600:472-477.

Mullins N, Forstner AJ, O´Connell KS …, Schulte EC, et al (2021) Genome-wide association study of over 40,000 bipolar disorder cases provides new insights into the underlying biology. Nat Genet 2021 53:817-829.

Tkachev A*, Stekolshchikova E*, Vanyushkina A, Zhang H*, Morozova A, Zozulya S, Kurochkin I, Anikanov N, Egorova A, Yushina E, Vogl T, Senner F, Schaupp SK, Reich-Erkelenz D, Papiol S, Oraki Kohshour M, Klöhn-Saghatolislam F, Kalman JL, Heilbronner U, Heilbronner M, Gade K, Comes AL, Budde M, Anderson-Schmidt H, Adorjan K, Wiltfang J, Reininghaus EZ, Juckel G, Dannlowski U, Fallgatter A, Spitzer C, Schmauß M, von Hagen M, Zorkina Y, Reznik A, Barkhatova A, Lisov R, Mokrov N, Panov M, Zubkov D, Petrova D, Zhou C, Liu Y, Pu J, Falkai P, Kostyuk G, Klyushnik T, Schulze TG, Xie P*, Schulte EC*, Khaitovich P* (2023) Lipid Alteration Signature in the Blood Plasma of Individuals With Schizophrenia, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder. JAMA Psychiatry 80:250-259.

Eva-Christina Schulte
© Eva-Christina Schulte
Prof. Dr. Dr. Eva-Christina Schulte

Website

-