Mental Health, Mitochondria, and the Battle of the Sexes

Overview

Journal Biomedicines

Specialty Biomedical Engineering

Date 2021 Feb 3

PMID 33530498

Citations 5

Authors

Paola Bressan

Peter Kramer

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

This paper presents a broad perspective on how mental disease relates to the different evolutionary strategies of men and women and to growth, metabolism, and mitochondria-the enslaved bacteria in our cells that enable it all. Several mental disorders strike one sex more than the other; yet what truly matters, regardless of one's sex, is how much one's brain is "female" and how much it is "male". This appears to be the result of an arms race between the parents over how many resources their child ought to extract from the mother, hence whether it should grow a lot or stay small and undemanding. An uneven battle alters the child's risk of developing not only insulin resistance, diabetes, or cancer, but a mental disease as well. Maternal supremacy increases the odds of a psychosis-spectrum disorder; paternal supremacy, those of an autism-spectrum one. And a particularly lopsided struggle may invite one or the other of a series of syndromes that come in pairs, with diametrically opposite, excessively "male" or "female" characteristics. By providing the means for this tug of war, mitochondria take center stage in steadying or upsetting the precarious balance on which our mental health is built.

Citing Articles

Iconic logic: the visual art of drawing the right conclusion.

Kramer P Front Psychol. 2024; 15:1368989.

PMID: 38911953 PMC: 11190960. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1368989.

Evidence for parent-of-origin effects in autism spectrum disorder: a narrative review.

Ryan N, Heron E J Appl Genet. 2023; 64(2):303-317.

PMID: 36710277 PMC: 10076404. DOI: 10.1007/s13353-022-00742-8.

Paternal preconceptional diet enriched with n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids affects offspring brain function in mice.

Li M, Shi Q, Jiang X, Liu X, Han W, Fan X Front Nutr. 2022; 9:969848.

PMID: 36386900 PMC: 9650249. DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.969848.

Special Issue "Mitochondria and Brain Disease".

Cardoso S Biomedicines. 2022; 10(8).

PMID: 36009401 PMC: 9405355. DOI: 10.3390/biomedicines10081854.

Iconic Mathematics: Math Designed to Suit the Mind.

Kramer P Front Psychol. 2022; 13:890362.

PMID: 35769758 PMC: 9234488. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.890362.

References

Tucci V, Isles A, Kelsey G, Ferguson-Smith A . Genomic Imprinting and Physiological Processes in Mammals. Cell. 2019; 176(5):952-965. DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.01.043. View

F C Lopes A . Mitochondrial metabolism and DNA methylation: a review of the interaction between two genomes. Clin Epigenetics. 2020; 12(1):182. PMC: 7684747. DOI: 10.1186/s13148-020-00976-5. View

Carruthers S, Van Rheenen T, Gurvich C, Sumner P, Rossell S . Characterising the structure of cognitive heterogeneity in schizophrenia spectrum disorders. A systematic review and narrative synthesis. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2019; 107:252-278. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.09.006. View

Shulyakova N, Andreazza A, Mills L, Eubanks J . Mitochondrial Dysfunction in the Pathogenesis of Rett Syndrome: Implications for Mitochondria-Targeted Therapies. Front Cell Neurosci. 2017; 11:58. PMC: 5348512. DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2017.00058. View

Pei L, Wallace D . Mitochondrial Etiology of Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Biol Psychiatry. 2018; 83(9):722-730. PMC: 5891364. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2017.11.018. View

Heijmans B, Tobi E, Stein A, Putter H, Blauw G, Susser E . Persistent epigenetic differences associated with prenatal exposure to famine in humans. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2008; 105(44):17046-9. PMC: 2579375. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806560105. View

Krefft M, Frydecka D, Adamowski T, Misiak B . From Prader-Willi syndrome to psychosis: translating parent-of-origin effects into schizophrenia research. Epigenomics. 2014; 6(6):677-88. DOI: 10.2217/epi.14.52. View

Hollis F, Kanellopoulos A, Bagni C . Mitochondrial dysfunction in Autism Spectrum Disorder: clinical features and perspectives. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2017; 45:178-187. DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2017.05.018. View

Kent L, Bowdin S, Kirby G, Cooper W, Maher E . Beckwith Weidemann syndrome: a behavioral phenotype-genotype study. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2008; 147B(7):1295-7. DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.b.30729. View

10.

Ekblad L, Rinne J, Puukka P, Laine H, Ahtiluoto S, Sulkava R . Insulin resistance is associated with poorer verbal fluency performance in women. Diabetologia. 2015; 58(11):2545-53. DOI: 10.1007/s00125-015-3715-4. View

11.

Matijevic T, Knezevic J, Slavica M, Pavelic J . Rett syndrome: from the gene to the disease. Eur Neurol. 2008; 61(1):3-10. DOI: 10.1159/000165342. View

12.

Crespi B . Genomic imprinting in the development and evolution of psychotic spectrum conditions. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2008; 83(4):441-93. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-185X.2008.00050.x. View

13.

Say L, Chou D, Gemmill A, Tuncalp O, Moller A, Daniels J . Global causes of maternal death: a WHO systematic analysis. Lancet Glob Health. 2014; 2(6):e323-33. DOI: 10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70227-X. View

14.

Hurst L . Embryonic growth and the evolution of the mammalian Y chromosome. I. The Y as an attractor for selfish growth factors. Heredity (Edinb). 1994; 73 ( Pt 3):223-32. DOI: 10.1038/hdy.1994.127. View

15.

Ni P, Chung S . Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Schizophrenia. Bioessays. 2020; 42(6):e1900202. DOI: 10.1002/bies.201900202. View

16.

Simchi L, Panov J, Morsy O, Feuermann Y, Kaphzan H . Novel Insights into the Role of UBE3A in Regulating Apoptosis and Proliferation. J Clin Med. 2020; 9(5). PMC: 7290732. DOI: 10.3390/jcm9051573. View

17.

Gilman S, Chang J, Xu B, Bawa T, Gogos J, Karayiorgou M . Diverse types of genetic variation converge on functional gene networks involved in schizophrenia. Nat Neurosci. 2012; 15(12):1723-8. PMC: 3689007. DOI: 10.1038/nn.3261. View

18.

Peters J . The role of genomic imprinting in biology and disease: an expanding view. Nat Rev Genet. 2014; 15(8):517-30. DOI: 10.1038/nrg3766. View

19.

Anglin R, Tarnopolsky M, Mazurek M, Rosebush P . The psychiatric presentation of mitochondrial disorders in adults. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2012; 24(4):394-409. DOI: 10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11110345. View

20.

Raine A . Sex differences in schizotypal personality in a nonclinical population. J Abnorm Psychol. 1992; 101(2):361-4. DOI: 10.1037//0021-843x.101.2.361. View