Analysis of the Molecular Role of COMT in Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain. This mental condition causes dramatic mood swings characterized by episodes of elation and high activity alternating with periods of low mood and low energy. Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million American adults, or about 2.6 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older in a given year. As many as twenty percent of those with this disease who aren’t treated commit suicide, according to National Institute of Mental Health. Some researchers think that alcohol abuse and psychiatric disorders might share vulnerability-enhancing genes. Many genes have been implicated in susceptibility to bipolar disorder. COMT, the gene symbol for catechol-O-methyltransferase, is involved in the breakdown of the catecholamne neurotransmitters. The enzyme introduces a methyl group to the catecholamine which is donated by S-adenyosyl methionine (SAM). The most common polymorphism in the membrane bound form of COMT is the Val/Met polymorphism resulting in low activity Met allele which increases susceptibility to bipolar disorder and may increase the chances for rapid cycling in these bipolar patients. This polymorphism is linked to psychiatric disorders related to the metabolism of catecholamine neurotransmitters like norepinephrine, dopamine, and epinephrine. The objective was to teach students to identify distinctive features in the protein sequences of COMT that show the variations in molecular genetics for multiple organisms and to include as many human sequences as possible to try to explain the phenotypic variations in populations. The research objective was to accumulate all of the information contained in the various databases on COMT to use bioinformatic visualization technology (multiple sequence alignments, phylogenetic trees, molecular interactions) for students to be able to understand the structure, polymorphisms, phenotypic variations between male and female, and population diversity for COMT as it pertains to bipolar disorder.