Short DNA strands key to understanding Alzheimer`s
Last Updated: Saturday, November 24, 2012, 13:45

Washington: Short snippets of DNA found in human brain tissue can help understand human cognitive function and risk for developing certain neurological diseases like Alzheimer`s and autism, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that many of the sequences with human-specific epigenetic characteristics, until recently, considered to be "junk DNA" - with no particular function - can present new leads on how the human brain has evolved, and a starting point for studying neurological diseases.

There are nearly 40 million positions in the human genome with Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequences that are different than those in non-human primates, making the task of learning which are important and which are inconsequential a challenge for scientists.

Rather than comparing these sequences strand by strand, wanted to identify the crucial set of differences between the two genomes by looking more broadly at the chromatin, the structure that packages the DNA and controls how it is expressed.



"We identified hundreds of loci that represent untapped areas of study that may have therapeutic potential," Akbarian said in a statement.

The team isolated small snippets of chromatin fibers from the prefrontal cortex. Next, they analysed these snippets to determine what genetic signals they were expressing.

For example, the sequence of DPP10?a gene critically important for normal human brain development not only showed distinct human-specific chromatin structures different from other primate brains such as the chimpanzee or the macaque, but the underlying DNA sequence showed some interesting differences from two extinct primates?the Neanderthal and Denisovan, most closely related to our own species and also referred to as `archaic hominins`.

"Many neurological disorders are unique to human and are very hard as a clinical syndrome to study in animals, such as Alzheimer`s disease, autism, and depression. By studying epigenetics we can learn more about those unique pieces of the human genome," said Akbarian.

The findings are published in the journal PLoS Biology.


First Published: Saturday, November 24, 2012, 13:45

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