Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis gene expression patterns divergence reveals different grade of RNA metabolism involvement

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) are neurodegenerative disorders characterized by progressive degeneration of central or peripheral nervous system. A central role of RNA metabolism has emerged in these diseases, concerning mRNAs processing and non-coding RNAs biogenesis. We aimed to identify possible crossroads or deviations in the dysregulated pathways of AD, PD and ALS. We performed RNA-seq analysis to investigate the regulation of both coding and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in ALS, AD and PD patients and controls (CTRL) in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs). A total of 293 differentially expressed (DE) lncRNAs and 87 mRNAs was found in ALS patients. In AD patients a total of 23 DE genes have emerged, 19 protein coding genes and 4 lncRNAs. By performing KEGG and GO analysis we found common affected pathways and biological processes in ALS and AD. In PD patients only 5 genes were found DE. Our data brought the light on the different importance of lncRNAs and mRNAs regulation in the principal neurodegenerative disorders, offering starting points for new investigations about pathogenic mechanism involved in them. Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells derived from 6 SALS, 6 AD and 6 PD patients and 14 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (CTR) were were deep-sequenced and included in Real Time PCR experiments.