Neuropathological and transcriptomic characteristics of the aged brain

• Main Authors: Jeremy A Miller, Angela Guillozet-Bongaarts, Laura E Gibbons, Nadia Postupna, Anne Renz, Allison E Beller, Susan M Sunkin, Lydia Ng, Shannon E Rose, Kimberly A Smith, Aaron Szafer, Chris Barber, Darren Bertagnolli, Kristopher Bickley, Krissy Brouner, Shiella Caldejon, Mike Chapin, Mindy L Chua, Natalie M Coleman, Eiron Cudaback, Christine Cuhaciyan, Rachel A Dalley, Nick Dee, Tsega Desta, Tim A Dolbeare, Nadezhda I Dotson, Michael Fisher, Nathalie Gaudreault, Garrett Gee, Terri L Gilbert, Jeff Goldy, Fiona Griffin, Caroline Habel, Zeb Haradon, Nika Hejazinia, Leanne L Hellstern, Steve Horvath, Kim Howard, Robert Howard, Justin Johal, Nikolas L Jorstad, Samuel R Josephsen, Chihchau L Kuan, Florence Lai, Eric Lee, Felix Lee, Tracy Lemon, Xianwu Li, Desiree A Marshall, Jose Melchor, Shubhabrata Mukherjee, Julie Nyhus, Julie Pendergraft, Lydia Potekhina, Elizabeth Y Rha, Samantha Rice, David Rosen, Abharika Sapru, Aimee Schantz, Elaine Shen, Emily Sherfield, Shu Shi, Andy J Sodt, Nivretta Thatra, Michael Tieu, Angela M Wilson, Thomas J Montine, Eric B Larson, Amy Bernard, Paul K Crane, Richard G Ellenbogen, C Dirk Keene, Ed Lein
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: eLife Sciences Publications Ltd 2017-11-01
• Series: eLife
• Subjects: Alzheimer's disease; aging; dementia; gene expression
• Online Access: https://elifesciences.org/articles/31126
• ISSN: 2050-084X

As more people live longer, age-related neurodegenerative diseases are an increasingly important societal health issue. Treatments targeting specific pathologies such as amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have not led to effective treatments, and there is increasing evidence of a disconnect between traditional pathology and cognitive abilities with advancing age, indicative of individual variation in resilience to pathology. Here, we generated a comprehensive neuropathological, molecular, and transcriptomic characterization of hippocampus and two regions cortex in 107 aged donors (median = 90) from the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study as a freely-available resource (http://aging.brain-map.org/). We confirm established associations between AD pathology and dementia, albeit with increased, presumably aging-related variability, and identify sets of co-expressed genes correlated with pathological tau and inflammation markers. Finally, we demonstrate a relationship between dementia and RNA quality, and find common gene signatures, highlighting the importance of properly controlling for RNA quality when studying dementia.