Neurogenerative Diseases - 7

Gene Expression Studies in
Neurodegenerative Disease
New approaches are revealing novel disease pathways
and advancing drug discovery efforts.

Gina Shaw
In the study of human neurodegenerative diseases-
both common conditions, such as Alzheimer's and
Parkinson's disease, and relatively rarer ones, such as
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Huntington's
disease-gene expression analysis is revealing new,
and sometimes shared, pathways of disease. For
example, over the past several years, gene expression
studies have implicated biological pathways such as
inflammation, protein homeostasis, and RNA splicing
as critical to the development and progression of
multiple neurodegenerative disorders.

pathways, implicating common biological processes
of neuroinflammation, apoptosis, transcriptional
dysregulation, and neuron-associated functions.
"Comparison of the differentially expressed (DE) genes
highlights a set of consistently altered genes that span
both diseases," wrote lead author Adam Labadorf,
Ph.D., founder and director of the Bioinformatics Hub.
"In particular, processes involving key genes in both
the innate and adaptive immune response are the
most prominent among genes implicated in both HD
and PD."

Recently, gene expression research has also suggested
a pan-neurodegenerative disease response that is
shared in Huntington's disease (HD) and Parkinson's
disease (PD). Although the two disorders are both
characterized by aberrant protein aggregation in
the brain, the specific proteins that aggregate and
types of neurons affected differ; but research from
Boston University's Bioinformatics Hub, published in
Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience in January 2018,
demonstrates that there is surprising consistency
between the two disorders in enriched biological

But although both disorders had comparable
numbers of DE genes, there were key differences.
"DE genes unique to HD are enriched in far more
coherent biological processes than the DE genes
unique to PD, suggesting that PD may represent a
more heterogeneous disorder," Dr. Labadorf wrote.
The new research was made possible by highthroughput RNA sequencing technology, Dr. Labadorf
told Biocompare. "Looking at the more than 25,000
genes in samples of diseased brain tissue at once is

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2017.00430/full
Neurogenerative Diseases

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