Department of Biotechnology
inStem (Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine)

The transcriptomic landscape of neurons carrying PSEN1 mutations reveals changes in extracellular matrix components and non-coding gene expression.

Publication Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

March 1, 2023

Journal

Neurobiology of disease

Volume/Issue

178

ISSN

1095-953X

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and irreversible brain disorder, which can occur either sporadically, due to a complex combination of environmental, genetic, and epigenetic factors, or because of rare genetic variants in specific genes (familial AD, or fAD). A key hallmark of AD is the accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) and Tau hyperphosphorylated tangles in the brain, but the underlying pathomechanisms and interdependencies remain poorly understood. Here, we identify and characterise gene expression changes related to two fAD mutations (A79V and L150P) in the Presenilin-1 (PSEN1) gene. We do this by comparing the transcriptomes of glutamatergic forebrain neurons derived from fAD-mutant human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and their individual isogenic controls generated via precision CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing. Our analysis of Poly(A) RNA-seq data detects 1111 differentially expressed coding and non-coding genes significantly altered in fAD. Functional characterisation and pathway analysis of these genes reveal profound expression changes in constituents of the extracellular matrix, important to maintain the morphology, structural integrity, and plasticity of neurons, and in genes involved in calcium homeostasis and mitochondrial oxidative stress. Furthermore, by analysing total RNA-seq data we reveal that 30 out of 31 differentially expressed circular RNA genes are significantly upregulated in the fAD lines, and that these may contribute to the observed protein-coding gene expression changes. The results presented in this study contribute to a better understanding of the cellular mechanisms impacted in AD neurons, ultimately leading to neuronal damage and death.

Alternate Journal

Neurobiol Dis

PubMed ID

36572121

Authors

Giulia I Corsi
Veerendra P Gadekar
Henriette Haukedal
Nadezhda T Doncheva
Christian Anthon
Sheetal Ambardar
Dasaradhi Palakodeti
Poul Hyttel
Kristine Freude
Stefan E Seemann
Jan Gorodkin

Keywords

Transcriptome
Amyloid beta-Peptides
Presenilin-1
Alzheimer Disease
Amyloid beta-Protein Precursor
Humans
Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
Neurons
Mutation