Conserved epigenomic signals in mice and humans reveal immune basis of Alzheimer's disease.

Nature
Authors
Keywords
Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a severe age-related neurodegenerative disorder characterized by accumulation of amyloid-β plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, synaptic and neuronal loss, and cognitive decline. Several genes have been implicated in AD, but chromatin state alterations during neurodegeneration remain uncharacterized. Here we profile transcriptional and chromatin state dynamics across early and late pathology in the hippocampus of an inducible mouse model of AD-like neurodegeneration. We find a coordinated downregulation of synaptic plasticity genes and regulatory regions, and upregulation of immune response genes and regulatory regions, which are targeted by factors that belong to the ETS family of transcriptional regulators, including PU.1. Human regions orthologous to increasing-level enhancers show immune-cell-specific enhancer signatures as well as immune cell expression quantitative trait loci, while decreasing-level enhancer orthologues show fetal-brain-specific enhancer activity. Notably, AD-associated genetic variants are specifically enriched in increasing-level enhancer orthologues, implicating immune processes in AD predisposition. Indeed, increasing enhancers overlap known AD loci lacking protein-altering variants, and implicate additional loci that do not reach genome-wide significance. Our results reveal new insights into the mechanisms of neurodegeneration and establish the mouse as a useful model for functional studies of AD regulatory regions.

Year of Publication
2015
Journal
Nature
Volume
518
Issue
7539
Pages
365-9
Date Published
2015 Feb 19
ISSN
1476-4687
URL
DOI
10.1038/nature14252
PubMed ID
25693568
PubMed Central ID
PMC4530583
Links
Grant list
R01 HG004037 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
R01HG004037-07 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
R01 NS078839 / NS / NINDS NIH HHS / United States
R01NS078839 / NS / NINDS NIH HHS / United States
RC1 HG005334 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States
RC1HG005334 / HG / NHGRI NIH HHS / United States