Histone H3 lysine 4 and 27 trimethylation signatures associated with human Alzheimer’s disease

Background: Epigenetic remodeling is emerging as a critical process for both onset and progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form of neurodegenerative dementia. However, it is not clear to what extent the distribution of histone modifications is involved in AD Methods: To investigate histone H3 modifications in AD, we compared the genome-wide distributions of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 in entorhinal cortices from severe sporadic AD patients and from age-matched healthy individuals of both sexes. Conclusions: The signature of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 identified in AD patients validates the role of epigenetic chromatin remodeling in neurodegenerative disease and sheds light on genomic adaptive mechanisms involved in AD. Frozen human entorhinal cortex (n°= 15) tissues generously provided by the Medical Research Council Brain Bank for Dementia Research, Oxford (UK) are analyzed throught ChIP-seq approach to investigate the genome-wide distributions of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3.