Abstract

Neurology in the Light of Genomics: Application of NGS and GWAS in Understanding Complex Neurological Disorders

Author(s): Amit Kumar Banerjee, Neelima Arora

Understanding structure and function of human brain remains the most intriguing region of advanced research. Neurological disorders also constitute a major proportion of ongoing brain associated research as several disorders are still not known in a comprehensive manner from a molecular, causative and functional perspective. Earlier linkage studies were considered the most reliable means to answer certain neurogenetics related questions in relevance to heredity and disease inheritance. Technical limitations and ethical issues always hindered the path of deriving more useful insight and understanding neurological diseases such as Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Bipolar Disorder, ADHD, ALS and other neurological issues. Improvement in the interdisciplinary approaches including genomics based analyses such as NGS, GWAS, GCTA enabled us to explore and understand the causes and factors responsible for onset of neurological conditions and effect of such neurological conditions on human wellbeing. This review summarizes the recent and on-going research carried out globally to unravel the mysteries of various neurological disorders employing latest genomics based technologies. The technological background and disease specific implementations are described in detail.