Figure 1

Differentially expressed genes between suicide completer vs. non-suicide group in bipolar disorder and schizophrenia cohorts. (A) Venn diagram of differentially expressed genes between suicide completer vs. non-suicide groups within bipolar and schizophrenia. (B) Mean expression levels of PLSCR4 (phospholipid scramblase 4) and EMX2 (empty spiracles homolog 2 (Drosophila)) mRNA transcripts were determined for suicide completers vs. non-suicide groups within both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in prefrontal cortex by qRT-PCR. The bars represent mean ± SEM. In schizophrenia, the mean expression levels of both genes were significantly down-regulated in the suicide group (n = 5) relative to the non-suicide cases (n = 25) by one-tailed, t-tests for unequal variances (EMX2 t(9) = 2.42, p = 0.02; PLSCR4 t(18) = 3.77, p = 0.0005). The estimated fold changes in the suicide group were -1.51 for EMX2 and -2.16 for PLSCR4 relative to the non-suicide group, consistent with our microarray data. In the bipolar disorder samples, no significant differences in mean expression levels for either gene were found between the suicide (n = 14 for EMX2; n = 12 for PLSCR4) vs. non-suicide cases (n = 15 for EMX2 ; n = 11 for PLSCR4) by unequal variance t-tests. * p < .05 ; *** p < .001.