IMAGE: Overview of the study design. AD = Alzheimer’s disease; ADNI = Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Campaign; ADSP = Alzheimer’s Disease Sequence Project; cis-GReX = cis-genetic expression; FOCUS = … view more
Credit: Liu N, et al., 2021, Genetics PLOS
A research team led by Chunshui Yu and Mulin Jun Li of Tianjin Medical University has discovered two new genes that may be involved in Alzheimer’s disease. They identified them by examining which genes were turned on and off in the hippocampus of infected people. The team ‘s new results are announced February 25 in Genetics PLOS.
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that involves worsening depression and the formation of protein plaques and tangles in the brain. One of the first areas of damage is the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory. To better understand which genes contribute to the progression of this hereditary disease, the researchers compared genes expressed at higher or lower levels in the hippocampus of people with Alzheimer’s disease in comparison to healthy brains. They identified 24 Alzheimer-related genes that appear to be affected through the hippocampus, using genomic and pre-hippocampus gene expression data. Many genes, such as APOE, were already known to contribute to the disease, but two were unknown, PTPN9 and PCDHA4. In addition, several are involved in the biological process associated with Alzheimer’s disease, such as plaque formation and cell death.
The research team further validated their findings by comparing gene expression for the two dozen genes with images of individuals ’brains. In Alzheimer’s disease, damage and loss of neurons causes the hippocampus to shrink, which can be measured through medical imaging. The researchers established that expression of two of the genes is related to the size of the hippocampus and the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Overall, the new findings improve our understanding of the genetic and cellular mechanisms that cause Alzheimer’s disease. The next step is to study the roles of the two modern genes and how they contribute to this devastating disease.
The authors add, “The study identifies two new genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in the context of hippocampal tension and reveals a candidate’s neurobiologic pathways with hippocampus medium from gene expression to Alzheimer’s disease . ”
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Citation: Liu N, Xu J, Liu H, Zhang S, Li M, Zhou Y, et al. (2021) Hippocampal transcription association study and neurobiologic pathway study for Alzheimer’s disease. PLoS Genet 17 (2): e1009363. https: /
Funding: This work was supported by China National Principal Research and Development Program (2018YFC1314300) to CY, China National Institute of Natural Science to CY (82030053, 81425013), China National Natural Science Foundation to MJL (31871327), China National Natural Science Foundation to CY JX (82001797), China National Institute of Natural Science to HL (81701668) and Tianjin Key Technology R&D Program (17ZXMFSY00090) to CY. The authors report no biochemical financial interests or conflicts of interest. The funders were not involved in the design of a study, the collection and analysis of data, the decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have stated that there are no competing interests.
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