The scientists here have used multiple sequencing approaches to sequence the genome of a volunteer from Saudi Arabia.
The scientists here have used multiple sequencing approaches to sequence the genome of a volunteer from Saudi Arabia.
Parkinson's Disease is a debilitating neurodegenerative disorder, characterized by motor and cognitive impairments, that affects >1% of the population over the age of 60. The pathogenesis of Parkinson disease is complex and remains largely unknown. Due to the cellular heterogeneity of the human brain and changes in cell type composition with disease progression, this complexity cannot be fully captured with bulk tissue studies. To address this, the authors generated single-nucleus RNA sequencing and whole-genome sequencing data from 100 postmortem cases and controls, carefully selected to represent the entire spectrum of Parkinson disease neuropathological severity and diverse clinical symptoms. The single nucleus data were generated from five brain regions, capturing the subcortical and cortical spread of Parkinson disease pathology. Rigorous preprocessing and quality control were applied to ensure data reliability. Committed to collaborative research and open science, this dataset is available on the AMP Parkinson disease Knowledge Platform, offering researchers a valuable tool to explore the molecular bases of Parkinson disease and accelerate advances in understanding and treating the disease.
The scientists here applied cortical gradients mapping to resting-state functional MRI data of patients with frontotemporal dementia and healthy controls. In healthy controls, the principal gradient maximally distinguished sensorimotor from default-mode network and the secondary gradient visual from salience network. The secondary gradient, however, showed widespread disruptions impacting the interactions among all networks specifically in bvFTD, while semantic and non-fluent variants exhibited more focal alterations in limbic and sensorimotor networks. These specific cortical gradients' fingerprints could serve as a functional signature for identifying early changes in neurodegenerative diseases or potential compensatory processes.