Project description:Identification of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) associated genes. Post mortem spinal cord grey matter from sporadic and familial ALS patients compared with controls.
Project description:Microarray analysis has been applied to the study of ALS in order to investigate gene expression in whole spinal cord homogenates of SOD1 G93A mice and human ALS cases, although the massive presence of glial cells and inflammatory factors has made it difficult to define which gene expression changes were motor neuron specific. Recently, laser capture microdissection (LCM), combined with microarray analysis, has allowed the identification of motor neuron specific changes in gene expression in mouse and human ALS cases. The aim of the present study is to combine LCM and microarray analysis to compare the gene expression profiles of motor neurons from two SOD1G93A mouse strains (129Sv and C57) with different progression of the disease in order to discover the molecular mechanisms that may contribute to the distinct phenotypes and to uncover factors underlying fast and slow disease progression Motor neurons have been isolated from the spinal cord of 129SvG93A mice, C57G93A mice and non transgenic littermates at different time points and the transcription expression profile of the isolated motor neurons has been analysed
Project description:Microarray analysis has been applied to the study of ALS in order to investigate gene expression in whole spinal cord homogenates of SOD1 G93A mice and human ALS cases, although the massive presence of glial cells and inflammatory factors has made it difficult to define which gene expression changes were motor neuron specific. Recently, laser capture microdissection (LCM), combined with microarray analysis, has allowed the identification of motor neuron specific changes in gene expression in mouse and human ALS cases. The aim of the present study is to combine LCM and microarray analysis to compare the gene expression profiles of motor neurons from two SOD1G93A mouse strains (129Sv and C57) with different progression of the disease in order to discover the molecular mechanisms that may contribute to the distinct phenotypes and to uncover factors underlying fast and slow disease progression
Project description:Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the deposition of mutated and misfolded proteins leading to the degradation of motor neurons and the motor cortex. Several ALS-associated proteins have been linked to small extracellular vesicles (EVs). However, the role of these EVs and their cargo in the early stages of ALS has not been investigated. This study aims to identify the earliest protein changes facilitated by EVs in ALS by examining the serum of newly diagnosed ALS patients. EVs were isolated from the serum of ALS (n = 15) and healthy control (HC, n = 15) patients, before undergoing mass spectrometry analysis resulting in the identification of a panel of proteins associated with the early changes of ALS. This panel consists of 9 statistically significantly up-regulated proteins and includes haptoglobin and hemoglobin subunits, complement, and afamin, which are involved in pathways including: heme homeostasis and autophagy. The identification of haptoglobin in the ALS serum EVs suggests it has potential as an early diagnostic biomarker whilst, activation of autophagy pathways suggests early recruitment of clearance pathways in ALS. Therefore, this study uncovers the processes and proteins being facilitated through small EVs in the initial stages of ALS.
Project description:Increasing evidence suggests that defective RNA processing contributes to the development of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This may be especially true for ALS caused by a repeat expansion in C9orf72 (c9ALS), in which the accumulation of RNA foci and dipeptide-repeat proteins are expected to modify RNA metabolism. We report extensive alternative splicing (AS) and alternative polyadenylation (APA) defects in the cerebellum of c9ALS cases (8,224 AS, 1,437 APA), including changes in ALS-associated genes (e.g. ATXN2 and FUS), and cases of sporadic ALS (sALS; 2,229 AS, 716 APA). Furthermore, hnRNPH and other RNA-binding proteins are predicted as potential regulators of cassette exon AS events for both c9ALS and sALS. Co-expression and gene-association network analyses of gene expression and AS data revealed divergent pathways associated with c9ALS and sALS. Examination transcriptiome profiles in c9orf72-associated ALS, sporadic ALS and healthy control
Project description:Identification of new and unpredicted full length Arabidopsis genes. Examination of cRNA prepared from Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype Columbia light grown 7-day old seedlings using whole genome tiling arrays. Keywords: other
Project description:Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a lymphoproliferative malignancy of B-cell origin that accounts for 10% of all lymphomas. Despite evidence suggesting strong familial clustering of HL, there is no clear understanding of the contribution of genes predisposing to HL. In this study, whole genome sequencing (WGS) was performed on 7 affected and 9 unaffected family members from three HL-prone families and variants were prioritized using our Familial Cancer Variant Prioritization Pipeline (FCVPPv2). WGS identified a total of 98,564, 170,550, and 113,654 variants which were reduced by pedigree-based filtering to 18,158, 465, and 26,465 in families I, II, and III, respectively. In addition to variants affecting amino acid sequences, variants in promoters, enhancers, transcription factors binding sites, and microRNA seed sequences were identified from upstream, downstream, 5' and 3' untranslated regions. A panel of 565 cancer predisposing and other cancer-related genes and of 2,383 potential candidate HL genes were also screened in these families to aid further prioritization. Pathway analysis of segregating genes with Combined Annotation Dependent Depletion Tool (CADD) scores >20 was performed using Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software which implicated several candidate genes in pathways involved in B-cell activation and proliferation and in the network of "Cancer, Hematological disease and Immunological Disease." We used the FCVPPv2 for further in silico analyses and prioritized 45 coding and 79 non-coding variants from the three families. Further literature-based analysis allowed us to constrict this list to one rare germline variant each in families I and II and two in family III. Functional studies were conducted on the candidate from family I in a previous study, resulting in the identification and functional validation of a novel heterozygous missense variant in the tumor suppressor gene DICER1 as potential HL predisposition factor. We aim to identify the individual genes responsible for predisposition in the remaining two families and will functionally validate these in further studies.