Epigenetic modifications control gene expression, but scientists still don’t know if or how they contribute to disease. To address this knowledge gap, the National Institutes of Health launched the Roadmap Epigenomics Project in 2008 to compare epigenomes in healthy and diseased cells.
In the August 17 Nature Neuroscience, two papers from separate but collaborative research groups report on some of the fruits of that effort. Both groups surveyed DNA methylation in hundreds of human AD and control brains and identified several regions where changes in this epigenetic mark correlated with the amount of Alzheimer’s pathology. The results may help flag genes that are turned up or down in AD, and provide insight into pathogenesis, said Philip De Jager at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, the first author of one of the papers.