Protein-Gene Interactions Involved in Alzheimer's Disease

University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers have used the transcriptome — the sum of all messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules expressed from genes — to map protein-gene interactions involved in Alzheimer's disease, reports ScienceDaily . In a new study , published July 23, 2019 in Cell Reports , the research team used the transcriptome to compare more than 400 study participants with clinically diagnosed and neuropathologically confirmed AD with an age-matched, non-demented control group from a community-based neuropathological study. Their results suggest that integrating gene perturbations with protein interactions can generate a comprehensive framework for characterizing alterations in the molecular network related to Alzheimer's. Senior author Dr. Robert Rissman, professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of the Biomarker Core for the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), remarked, "One of the big problems in AD research is identifying patients at risk at the right time. Understanding the gene networks that may change in specific patient groups can help streamline clinical trials recruitment efforts and reduce costs and time to enroll trials."