We sought to understand, at the systems level and in an unbiased fashion, how gene expression was most different in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) by mining published microarray datasets (1, 2). Comparing global gene expression profiles between patient and control revealed that a set of 84 genes were expressed at significantly different levels in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) of patients with Alzheimer’s Disease (1, 2). We used computational analyses to classify these genes into known pathways and existing gene sets, and to describe the major differences in the epigenetic marks at the genomic loci of these genes. While a portion of these genes is computationally cognizable as part of a set of genes up-regulated in the brains of patients with AD (3), many other genes in the gene set identified here have not previously been studied in association with AD. Transcriptional repression, both pre- and post-transcription appears to be affected; nearly 40% of these genes are transcriptional targets of MicroRNA-19A/B (miR-19A/B), the zinc finger protein 10 (ZNF10), or of the AP-1 repressor jun dimerization protein 2 (JDP2).
Identification of molecular alterations in leukocytes from gene expression profiles of peripheral whole blood of Alzheimer’s disease
