The APOE4 allele has a well-established risk for increased neuroinflammation and early-onset dementia in humans. However, it is unclear if the APOE4 allele contributes to the disease dynamics of other neurodegeneration types including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
With this resource we intend to compute bulk tissue transcriptomic data from human nondemented APOE4 carriers together with single-cell data to infer if the APOE4 genotype affects gene expression patterns in cells other than microglia. Although the datasets do not contain personal data (eg. names and birthdays), the original sample sources at NIH require the use of secure servers to process the omics raw data. We will then use these inferred gene expression relationships and examine if they occur in the transcriptomics from ALS patient tissues.
We believe that since the APOE4 genotype affects the processes of neuroinflammation it may well contribute to the gene expression and ALS disease dynamics.