Next generation sequencing reveals upregulation of the lncRNA LINC-PINT in the substantia nigra of human Parkinson's disease patients compared to control donors

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, involving the selecive death of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta brain region. Here, we performed next generation sequencing on RNA extracted from human substantia nigra tissue. The samples, acquired from the Netherland's Brain Bank, were taken post-mortem from PD and non-PD control donors. Analysis of the data revealed an upregulation of lncRNA LINC-PINT in PD substantia nigra. LINC-PINT interracts with the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2), inhibiting the tracription of multiple targets. Correspondingly, analysis of the data revealed that targets of PRC2 displayed larger disease-associated differences as compared to other genes, as well as enrichment for downregulation, suggesting that the differential expression of LINC-PINT in PD effects LINC-PINT/PRC2 interaction as well. Overall design: ribosomal-RNA depleted RNA-Seq libraries were prepared from the substantia nigra of PD and non-PD control donors. Only samples with RIN>6.5 were used for library preperation