To test this hypothesis, an international team led by evolutionary biologist Philipp Khaitovich of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences in China and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, set out to see how many brain -
related genes implicated in schizophrenia underwent positive natural selection since humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor between 5 million and 7 million years ago.
Not exact matches
Less clear is how this misfolding
relates to the growing number of
genes implicated in PD through analysis of human genetics.
They found that six of the categories included a high proportion of
genes also
implicated in schizophrenia; the
genes in these six categories
relate to energy metabolism.
In the new study, the researchers discovered that during the second trimester of human brain development, oRG cells express
genes related to a fundamental signaling pathway called mTOR, defects in which have previously been
implicated in autism and several other psychiatric disorders.
They hypothesized that the differences might be
related to variations in two
genes, called ASPM and microcephalin, which are thought to be
implicated in brain development.
They note that this network is strongly
related to
genes previously
implicated in studies of autism and intellectual disability.
Potential projects include identifying common pathways that modify retinal degenerative disease from a large collection of actively maintained mouse models; determining molecular networks
implicated in pathological disruption of the retinal pigment epithelium; identifying molecular pathways that regulate postnatal ocular growth; and using mouse models to assess the pathogenic role of
gene variants that increase the risk of age -
related macular degeneration as identified by human genome - wide association studies.
The study
implicates genes expressed in brain tissue, particularly those
related to neuronal and synaptic function.
«The NFT is thought to be more closely
related to memory decline than other forms of aging -
related pathologies, but there are still very few
genes that have been
implicated in the accumulation of this key feature of Alzheimer's disease and other brain diseases.»
70/3: 15 Chromosome interaction analysis of risk loci in
related autoimmune diseases reveals complex, long - range promoter interactions
implicating novel candidate
genes.