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(Significant breakthrough?) A protein called Reelin keeps popping up in brains that resist aging and Alzheimer’s

A protein called Reelin keeps popping up in brains that resist aging and Alzheimer’s

A key protein that helps assemble the brain early in life also appears to protect the organ from Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging.

A trio of studies published in the past year all suggest that the protein Reelin helps maintain thinking and memory in ailing brains, though precisely how it does this remains uncertain. The studies also show that when Reelin levels fall, neurons become more vulnerable.

Nature study link...
Single-cell multiregion dissection of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of dementia worldwide, but the cellular pathways that underlie its pathological progression across brain regions remain poorly understood1,2,3. Here we report a single-cell transcriptomic atlas of six different brain regions in the aged human brain, covering 1.3?million cells from 283 post-mortem human brain samples across 48 individuals with and without Alzheimer’s disease. We identify 76 cell types, including region-specific subtypes of astrocytes and excitatory neurons and an inhibitory interneuron population unique to the thalamus and distinct from canonical inhibitory subclasses. We identify vulnerable populations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that are depleted in specific brain regions in Alzheimer’s disease, and provide evidence that the Reelin signalling pathway is involved in modulating the vulnerability of these neurons.