DNA microarrays in neuropsychopharmacology

Recent advances in experimental genomics, coupled with the wealth of sequence information available for a variety of organisms, have the potential to transform the way pharmacological research is performed. At present, high-density DNA microarrays allow researchers to quickly and accurately quantify gene-expression changes in a massively parallel manner. Although now well established in other biomedical fields, such as cancer and genetics research, DNA microarrays have only recently begun to make significant inroads into pharmacology. To date, the major focus in this field has been on the general application of DNA microarrays to toxicology and drug discovery and design. This review summarizes the major microarray findings of relevance to neuropsychopharmacology, as a prelude to the design and analysis of future basic and clinical microarray experiments. The ability of DNA microarrays to monitor gene expression simultaneously in a large-scale format is helping to usher in a post-genomic age, where simple constructs about the role of nature versus nurture are being replaced by a functional understanding of gene expression in living organisms.