A Chinese research team of Tianjin Medical University has discovered two new genes potentially involved in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Findings have been published in the journal PLOS Genetics. In the published study, scientists explored the genes expressed at higher and lower levels in the hippocampus, part of the brain involved in the memory, of 111 people with AD compared to those with healthy brains. In addition to several genes that were already known to contribute to the disease, they identified two new genes called PTPN9 and PCDHA4. They reported that the presence of the two genes is related to the size of the hippocampus and a diagnosis of AD. It is unclear what role the two newly identified genes could play in the disease but the functional annotation revealed that PTPN9 participated in neurogenesis and dephosphorylation and both PTPN9 and PCDHA4 were involved in nervous system development.
https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1009363
