Last Halloween, I successfully created the phenotype of a dinosaur with my godson

One consequence of this is that by expressing a receptor the neurons can use to take in cholesterol, it makes them more susceptible to toxic amyloid beta oligomers.

One that stood out was that there are massive differences in cholesterol homeostatic pathways, with the vulnerable locus coeruleus showing signs that its neurons are super “hungry” for cholesterol.

By looking at the average gene expression differences between these regions within individuals who lack significant degeneration, we found some interesting features.

In this study, we compared two brainstem regions that have remarkably similar anatomical features but are distinct in their vulnerability to AD - the locus coeruleus and the substantia nigra.