Identification of Key Genes and Pathways for Alzheimer's Disease
Biophys Rep 2019, 5(2):98–109 https://doi.org/10.1007/s41048-019-0086-2 Biophysics Reports RESEARCH ARTICLE Identification of key genes and pathways for Alzheimer’s disease via combined analysis of genome-wide expression profiling in the hippocampus Mengsi Wu1,2, Kechi Fang1, Weixiao Wang1,2, Wei Lin1,2, Liyuan Guo1,2&, Jing Wang1,2& 1 CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China 2 Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China Received: 8 August 2018 / Accepted: 17 January 2019 / Published online: 20 April 2019 Abstract In this study, combined analysis of expression profiling in the hippocampus of 76 patients with Alz- heimer’s disease (AD) and 40 healthy controls was performed. The effects of covariates (including age, gender, postmortem interval, and batch effect) were controlled, and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified using a linear mixed-effects model. To explore the biological processes, func- tional pathway enrichment and protein–protein interaction (PPI) network analyses were performed on the DEGs. The extended genes with PPI to the DEGs were obtained. Finally, the DEGs and the extended genes were ranked using the convergent functional genomics method. Eighty DEGs with q \ 0.1, including 67 downregulated and 13 upregulated genes, were identified. In the pathway enrichment analysis, the 80 DEGs were significantly enriched in one Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway, GABAergic synapses, and 22 Gene Ontology terms. These genes were mainly involved in neuron, synaptic signaling and transmission, and vesicle metabolism. These processes are all linked to the pathological features of AD, demonstrating that the GABAergic system, neurons, and synaptic function might be affected in AD.
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