Postmortem Cortex Samples Identify Distinct Molecular Subtypes of ALS: Retrotransposon Activation, Oxidative Stress, and Activated Glia

Document Type

Article

Abstract

© 2019 The Author(s) Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease characterized by the progressive loss of motor neurons. While several pathogenic mutations have been identified, the vast majority of ALS cases have no family history of disease. Thus, for most ALS cases, the disease may be a product of multiple pathways contributing to varying degrees in each patient. Using machine learning algorithms, we stratify the transcriptomes of 148 ALS postmortem cortex samples into three distinct molecular subtypes. The largest cluster, identified in 61% of patient samples, displays hallmarks of oxidative and proteotoxic stress. Another 19% of the samples shows predominant signatures of glial activation. Finally, a third group (20%) exhibits high levels of retrotransposon expression and signatures of TARDBP/TDP-43 dysfunction. We further demonstrate that TDP-43 (1) directly binds a subset of retrotransposon transcripts and contributes to their silencing in vitro, and (2) pathological TDP-43 aggregation correlates with retrotransposon de-silencing in vivo.

Keywords

amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, genetics and genomics of ALS, neurodegeneration, neurodegenerative disease, retrotransposons, TDP-43, transposable elements

Publication Date

10-29-2019

Publication Title

Cell Reports

E-ISSN

22111247

Volume

29

Issue

5

First Page

1164

Last Page

1177.e5

PubMed ID

31665631

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1016/j.celrep.2019.09.066

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