Publications by authors named "Abby Vander Linden"

Introduction: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most prevalent neurodegenerative disease, yet our comprehension predominantly relies on studies within non-Hispanic White (NHW) populations. Here we provide an extensive survey of the proteomic landscape of AD across diverse racial/ethnic groups.

Methods: Two cortical regions, from multiple centers, were harmonized by uniform neuropathological diagnosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Multi-omics studies in Alzheimer's disease (AD) revealed many potential disease pathways and therapeutic targets. Despite their promise of precision medicine, these studies lacked Black Americans (BA) and Latin Americans (LA), who are disproportionately affected by AD.

Methods: To bridge this gap, Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Alzheimer's Disease (AMP-AD) expanded brain multi-omics profiling to multi-ethnic donors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Alzheimer's disease (AD) primarily affects diverse populations, but most research has focused on the non-Hispanic White demographic, necessitating a broader understanding across different racial and ethnic groups.
  • This study involved analyzing brain tissues from donors of various racial backgrounds, utilizing mass spectrometry to examine protein levels in key brain regions related to AD, resulting in a large dataset of proteins associated with the disease.
  • The findings highlighted significant protein elevations linked to AD across all groups, emphasizing the importance of ethnoracial-specific differences in protein expression for future research and potential treatments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Multi-omics studies in Alzheimer's disease (AD) revealed many potential disease pathways and therapeutic targets. Despite their promise of precision medicine, these studies lacked African Americans (AA) and Latin Americans (LA), who are disproportionately affected by AD.

Methods: To bridge this gap, Accelerating Medicines Partnership in AD (AMP-AD) expanded brain multi-omics profiling to multi-ethnic donors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Three-dimensional (3D) modeling techniques have been increasingly utilized across disciplines for the visualization and analysis of complex structures. We employ 3D-digital photogrammetry for understanding the scaling of the body axis of 12 species of scincid lizards in the genus Brachymeles. These skinks represent a diverse radiation which shows tremendous variation in body size and degree of axial elongation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cranial weapons of all shapes and sizes are common throughout the animal kingdom and are frequently accompanied by the evolution of additional traits that enhance the use of those weapons. Bovids (cattle, sheep, goats, antelope) and cervids (deer) within the mammal clade Ruminantia are particularly well known for their distinct and varied cranial appendages in the form of horns and antlers, which are used as weapons in intraspecific combat between males for access to mates. Combat in these species takes many forms, including head-on collisions (ramming); stabbing an opponent's head or body with horn tips (stabbing); rearing and clashing downwards with horns (fencing); or interlocking antlers or horns while vigorously pushing and twisting (wrestling).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Mammals flex, extend, and rotate their spines as they perform behaviors critical for survival, such as foraging, consuming prey, locomoting, and interacting with conspecifics or predators. The atlas-axis complex is a mammalian innovation that allows precise head movements during these behaviors. Although morphological variation in other vertebral regions has been linked to ecological differences in mammals, less is known about morphological specialization in the cervical vertebrae, which are developmentally constrained in number but highly variable in size and shape.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The increased accessibility of soft-tissue data through diffusible iodine-based contrast-enhanced computed tomography (diceCT) enables comparative biologists to increase the taxonomic breadth of their studies with museum specimens. However, it is still unclear how soft-tissue measurements from preserved specimens reflect values from freshly collected specimens and whether diceCT preparation may affect these measurements. Here, we document and evaluate the accuracy of diceCT in museum specimens based on the soft-tissue reconstructions of brains and eyes of five bats.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Marsupial mammal relatives (stem metatherians) from the Mesozoic Era (252-66 million years ago) are mostly known from isolated teeth and fragmentary jaws. Here we report on the first near-complete skull remains of a North American Late Cretaceous metatherian, the stagodontid Didelphodon vorax. Our phylogenetic analysis indicates that marsupials or their closest relatives evolved in North America, as part of a Late Cretaceous diversification of metatherians, and later dispersed to South America.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF