Importance of Regional Differences in Brain Throughout Aging for Down Syndrome

Abstract

Down syndrome (DS) which affects approximately one in 700 live births is caused by an extra copy of the long arm of human chromosome 21 (HSA21). Statistical analysis has been done for understanding the protein expression profiles based on age and sex differences in DS. In addition there are ongoing research efforts for comprehending expression patterns based on different brain regions. However little is known about the mechanisms of expression differences in brain regions throughout aging. Insights into these mechanisms are required to understand the susceptibility of distinct brain regions to neuronal insults with aging. Dissection of this selective vulnerability will be critical to our understanding of DS. By extracting information from the critical proteins which take part in the mechanism of the molecular pathways the diagnosis of DS can become easier. Also understanding the molecular pathways can contribute to develop effective drugs for the treatment of DS. In this work forward feature selection technique is applied for determining the protein subsets for old and young mice datasets which consist of the expression profiles across different brain regions. When these subsets are analyzed it is observed that selected proteins play important roles in the processes such as mTOR signaling pathway AD MAPK signaling pathway and apoptosis. We believe that the subsets of protein selected in our work can be utilized to understand the process of DS and can be used to develop age-related effective drugs.