Admixture mapping identifies novel Alzheimer's disease risk regions in African Americans.

Background: This study used admixture mapping to prioritize the genetic regions associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in African American (AA) individuals, followed by ancestry-aware regression analysis to fine-map the prioritized regions.

Methods: We analyzed 10,271 individuals from 17 different AA datasets. We performed admixture mapping and meta-analyzed the results.

Generation of disease-specific autopsy-confirmed iPSCs lines from postmortem isolated Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells.

Understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie neurodegenerative disorders has been hampered by a lack of readily available model systems that replicate the complexity of the human disease. Recent advances in stem cell technology have facilitated the derivation of patient-specific stem cells from a variety of differentiated cell types. These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are attractive disease models since they can be grown and differentiated to produce large numbers of disease-relevant cell types.

Genome-wide linkage analyses of non-Hispanic white families identify novel loci for familial late-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Introduction: Few high penetrance variants that explain risk in late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) families have been found.

Methods: We performed genome-wide linkage and identity-by-descent (IBD) analyses on 41 non-Hispanic white families exhibiting likely dominant inheritance of LOAD, and having no mutations at known familial Alzheimer's disease (AD) loci, and a low burden of APOE ε4 alleles.

Results: Two-point parametric linkage analysis identified 14 significantly linked regions, including three novel linkage regions for LOAD (5q32, 11q12.

Global and local ancestry in African-Americans: Implications for Alzheimer's disease risk.

Introduction: African-American (AA) individuals have a higher risk for late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) than Americans of primarily European ancestry (EA). Recently, the largest genome-wide association study in AAs to date confirmed that six of the Alzheimer's disease (AD)-related genetic variants originally discovered in EA cohorts are also risk variants in AA; however, the risk attributable to many of the loci (e.g.

Polymorphic variants in tenascin-C (TNC) are associated with atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease.

Tenascin-C (TNC) is an extracellular matrix protein implicated in biological processes important for atherosclerotic plaque development and progression, including smooth muscle cell migration and proliferation. Previously, we observed differential expression of TNC in atherosclerotic aortas compared with healthy aortas. The goal of this study was to investigate whether common genetic variation within TNC is associated with risk of atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease (CAD) in three independent datasets.

Compound heterozygosity for loss-of-function lysyl-tRNA synthetase mutations in a patient with peripheral neuropathy.

Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease comprises a genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of peripheral nerve disorders characterized by impaired distal motor and sensory function. Mutations in three genes encoding aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (ARSs) have been implicated in CMT disease primarily associated with an axonal pathology. ARSs are ubiquitously expressed, essential enzymes responsible for charging tRNA molecules with their cognate amino acids.