Evaluation of reference genes for gene expression studies in human brown adipose tissue
ADIPOCYTE
Authors: Taube, Magdalena; Andersson-Assarsson, Johanna C.; Lindberg, Kristin; Pereira, Maria J.; Gabel, Markus; Svensson, Maria K.; Eriksson, Jan W.; Svensson, Per-Arne
Abstract
Human brown adipose tissue (BAT) has during the last 5 year been subjected to an increasing research interest, due to its putative function as a target for future obesity treatments. The most commonly used method for molecular studies of human BAT is the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). This method requires normalization to a reference gene (genes with uniform expression under different experimental conditions, e.g. similar expression levels between human BAT and WAT), but so far no evaluation of reference genes for human BAT has been performed. Two different microarray datasets with samples containing human BAT were used to search for genes with low variability in expression levels. Seven genes (FAM96B, GNB1, GNB2, HUWE1, PSMB2, RING1 and TPT1) identified by microarray analysis, and 8 commonly used reference genes (18S, B2M, GAPDH, LRP10, PPIA, RPLP0, UBC, and YWHAZ) were selected and further analyzed by quantitative PCR in both BAT containing perirenal adipose tissue and subcutaneous adipose tissue. Results were analyzed using 2 different algorithms (Normfinder and geNorm). Most of the commonly used reference genes displayed acceptably low variability (geNorm M-values <0.5) in the samples analyzed, but the novel reference genes identified by microarray displayed an even lower variability (M-values <0.25). Our data suggests that PSMB2, GNB2 and GNB1 are suitable novel reference genes for qPCR analysis of human BAT and we recommend that they are included in future gene expression studies of human BAT.
LRP10 in autosomal-dominant Parkinson's disease
MOVEMENT DISORDERS
Authors: Chen, You; Cen, Zhidong; Zheng, Xiaosheng; Pan, Qinqing; Chen, Xinhui; Zhu, Lili; Chen, Si; Wu, Hongwei; Xie, Fei; Wang, Haotian; Yang, Dehao; Wang, Lebo; Zhang, Baorong; Luo, Wei
Abstract
Background Recently, the LRP10 gene has been identified as a novel genetic cause in individuals affected by Parkinson's disease (PD), Parkinson's disease dementia, or dementia with Lewy bodies. Objective We investigated the involvement of LRP10 mutations in Chinese patients with familial PD and reviewed previous studies of LRP10 mutations in patients with PD. Methods A mutation analysis of the LRP10 gene was performed in a cohort of 205 unrelated Chinese patients with familial PD. Burden analysis was conducted using data from the Genome Aggregation Database and 5 genetic studies of LRP10 in patients with PD (including our cohort). Results A total of 3 novel potentially pathogenic variants, c.32T>A (p.L11H), c.1184G>A (p.R395H), and c.1333G>A (p.A445T), were detected in 3 probands of our cohort. However, burden analysis argued against an overrepresentation of variant alleles in patients with PD. Conclusions Genetic screening of the LRP10 gene in our cohort may provide independent, albeit limited, evidence for the pathogenicity of LRP10 in familial PD. Burden analysis using data from current studies failed to support the association between LRP10 and PD in general. Thus, more robust replication studies are warranted to determine the involvement of LRP10 in the pathogenesis of PD. (c) 2019 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society