A project mapping transcriptomes from 1.3 million brain cells to study Alzheimer’s uncovered insights into cognitive resilience and the role of astrocytes in brain function. The findings could guide future Alzheimer’s therapy development.
Credit: SciTechDaily.com Researchers created an annotated library of gene readouts from 1.3 million brain cortex cells, focusing on individuals with and without Alzheimer’s disease.
This comprehensive atlas, intended to enhance molecular understanding of cognitive resilience and vulnerability, reveals potential strategies for inducing cognitive resilience artificially. Less than a decade ago, when Dr. Hansruedi Mathys launched an ambitious project to create an annotated library of all the gene readouts stored within 100 individual brain cells, the task felt daunting.
Now, with technological advances, Mathys successfully mapped out such ‘transcriptomes’ from not just 100, but from 1.3 million brain cortex cells from 48 individuals with and without Alzheimer’s disease. Hansruedi Mathys, Ph.
D. Credit: Hansruedi Mathys Mathys, who pioneered single-cell transcriptomic analysis on post-mortem human brain tissue during his postdoctoral training and is now an assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says that the resulting atlas of the aging human brain holds molecular insights into the brain’s vulnerability and resilience. Exploring Cognitive Resilience in Alzheimer’s Research “I am e.