Single-Cell DNA Sequencing Offers New Angle on Causes Of Alzheimer’s Disease; Brain Cells Acquire Mutations As They Age, But in Alzheimer’s, This Is Accelerated, and in Telling Pattern; Suggestion That Alzheimer’s Mutations Are Caused by Reactive Oxygen Species

Alzheimer’s disease is marked by a loss of functional neurons in the brain. But what causes this loss? Through single-cell genome sequencing, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute show that people with Alzheimer’s have an abundance of newly acquired mutations in their neurons--more than people of the same age without Alzheimer’s, and enough to disable genes important to brain function. Findings were published in Nature on April 20, 2022. The article is titled “Somatic Genomic Changes in Single Alzheimer’s Disease Neurons.”