Publications by authors named "Rami Al-ouran"

Millions of RNA sequencing samples have been deposited into public databases, providing a rich resource for biological research. These datasets encompass tens of thousands of experiments and offer comprehensive insights into human cellular regulation. However, a major challenge is how to integrate these experiments that acquired at different conditions.

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Aging is a major risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), and cell-type vulnerability underlies its characteristic clinical manifestations. We have performed longitudinal, single-cell RNA-sequencing in with pan-neuronal expression of human tau, which forms AD neurofibrillary tangle pathology. Whereas tau- and aging-induced gene expression strongly overlap (93%), they differ in the affected cell types.

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Article Synopsis
  • Mutations in the MeCP2 gene cause a severe neurological disorder, but understanding its molecular function has been challenging due to inconsistent results from individual studies on gene expression.
  • Researchers developed a new method to analyze extensive public transcriptomic data, processing it uniformly to identify important gene patterns.
  • This analysis revealed a core set of genes consistently affected across different studies, with specific subsets showing distinct functional roles, and these findings could guide future research on related diseases like autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
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  • * A virtual 3-day hackathon brought together 49 early-career scientists from 12 countries, focusing on building tools and pipelines specifically for PD research, with each team working on one of nine distinct projects.
  • * The hackathon not only generated resources to enhance research but also provided training and networking opportunities, ultimately fostering creative problem-solving and collaboration essential for emerging researchers in data science.
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Background And Objectives: Genetic variants affect both Parkinson disease (PD) risk and manifestations. Although genetic information is of potential interest to patients and clinicians, genetic testing is rarely performed during routine PD clinical care. The goal of this study was to examine interest in comprehensive genetic testing among patients with PD and document reactions to possible findings from genome sequencing in 2 academic movement disorder clinics.

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  • The study aimed to identify genetic factors related to different motor subtypes of Parkinson's disease (PD), specifically tremor dominant (TD) and postural instability/gait difficulty (PIGD).
  • Researchers analyzed data from 3,212 PD patients of European ancestry using genome-wide association studies to compare motor subtypes and assess genetic associations.
  • Results revealed several genetic variants linked to PD motor subtypes and suggested a shared genetic risk for essential tremor and tremor-dominant Parkinson's disease, highlighting the complexity of PD's genetic influences on its clinical presentation.
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Metastasis has been considered as the terminal step of tumor progression. However, recent genomic studies suggest that many metastases are initiated by further spread of other metastases. Nevertheless, the corresponding pre-clinical models are lacking, and underlying mechanisms are elusive.

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We present a consensus atlas of the human brain transcriptome in Alzheimer's disease (AD), based on meta-analysis of differential gene expression in 2,114 postmortem samples. We discover 30 brain coexpression modules from seven regions as the major source of AD transcriptional perturbations. We next examine overlap with 251 brain differentially expressed gene sets from mouse models of AD and other neurodegenerative disorders.

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In Alzheimer's disease (AD), spliceosomal proteins with critical roles in RNA processing aberrantly aggregate and mislocalize to Tau neurofibrillary tangles. We test the hypothesis that Tau-spliceosome interactions disrupt pre-mRNA splicing in AD. In human postmortem brain with AD pathology, Tau coimmunoprecipitates with spliceosomal components.

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Meningiomas account for one-third of all primary brain tumors. Although typically benign, about 20% of meningiomas are aggressive, and despite the rigor of the current histopathological classification system there remains considerable uncertainty in predicting tumor behavior. Here, we analyzed 160 tumors from all 3 World Health Organization (WHO) grades (I through III) using clinical, gene expression, and sequencing data.

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Target nomination for drug development has been a major challenge in the path to finding a cure for several neurological disorders. Comprehensive transcriptome profiles have revealed brain gene expression changes associated with many neurological disorders, and the functional validation of these changes is a critical next step. Model organisms are a proven approach for the elucidation of disease mechanisms, including screening of gene candidates as therapeutic targets.

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One major challenge encountered with interpreting human genetic variants is the limited understanding of the functional impact of genetic alterations on biological processes. Furthermore, there remains an unmet demand for an efficient survey of the wealth of information on human homologs in model organisms across numerous databases. To efficiently assess the large volume of publically available information, it is important to provide a concise summary of the most relevant information in a rapid user-friendly format.

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Data mining algorithms and sequencing methods (such as RNA-seq and ChIP-seq) are being combined to discover genomic regulatory motifs that relate to a variety of phenotypes. However, motif discovery algorithms often produce very long lists of putative transcription factor binding sites, hindering the discovery of phenotype-related regulatory elements by making it difficult to select a manageable set of candidate motifs for experimental validation. To address this issue, the authors introduce the motif selection problem and provide coverage-based search heuristics for its solution.

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Background: An important focus of genomic science is the discovery and characterization of all functional elements within genomes. In silico methods are used in genome studies to discover putative regulatory genomic elements (called words or motifs). Although a number of methods have been developed for motif discovery, most of them lack the scalability needed to analyze large genomic data sets.

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