CCR3 gene overexpression in patients with Down syndrome

Humanin gene expression in subjects with Parkinson's disease

BACKGROUND

Bradykinesia, tremor, rigidity and postural instability are the hallmark of Parkinson's disease (PD). Non-motor symptoms including cognitive, behavioral, and neuropsychiatric changes, sensory and sleep disturbances that may precede the motor symptoms by years. The peculiar pathological features of PD are decreased dopaminergic neurons and dopamine levels in the substantia nigra pars compacta and pontine locus coeruleus. Humanin is produced by a small gene peptide, which is located in the mitochondria genome. Inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and altered transcription have been recognized as causative factors of PD. This evidence has prompted many researchers to focus on studying the functions of DNA and mitochondria. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate Humanin mRNA levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of PD subjects, compared with those in PBMCs of normal control (NC) subjects.

METHODS AND RESULTS

A total of 220 participants, including 154 PD patients (57 females and 97 males; mean age 71.54 years, SD 7.8) and 66 CN (28 females and 38 males; mean age 70.54 years, SD 9.45) were enrolled for the qRT-PCR analysis. Increased Humanin mRNA levels were found in PD samples, compared to controls.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the present data confirm the tendency of mitochondria to overexpress mRNA in PD, which could be a cellular attempt to reduce apoptotic damage in PD subjects. Humanin might be useful as a marker for a better diagnosis of PD, and we cannot exclude that in the future it might also play a role on prognosis and in the possible therapies for PD.

Role of long non-coding RNAs in Down syndrome patients: a transcriptome analysis study

Down syndrome (DS) is defined by the presence of a third copy of chromosome 21. Several comorbidities can be found in these patients, such as intellectual disability (ID), muscle weakness, hypotonia, congenital heart disease, and autoimmune diseases. The molecular mechanisms playing a role in the development of such comorbidities are still unclear. The regulation and expression of genes that map to chromosome 21 are dynamic and complex, so it is important to perform global gene expression studies with high statistical power to fully characterize the transcriptome in DS patients. This study was undertaken to evaluate mRNAs and lncRNA expression in patients with DS versus a matched cohort of healthy subjects. RNA sequencing was used to perform this transcriptome study. Differential expression analysis revealed 967 transcripts with padj ≤ 0.05. Among them, 447 transcripts were differentially expressed in patients with DS compared to controls. Particularly, 203 transcripts were down expressed (151 protein-coding mRNAs, 45 lncRNAs, 1 microRNA, 1 mitochondrial tRNA, 1 ribozyme, and 1 small nuclear RNA) and 244 were over expressed (210 protein-coding mRNAs and 34 lncRNAs). Interestingly, deregulated lncRNAs are involved in pathways that play a role in developmental disorders, neurological diseases, DNA replication and repair mechanisms, and cancer development in DS patients. In conclusion, these results suggest a role of lncRNAs in the phenotype of DS patients.