Locked 468-gene panel and methods for within-disease transcriptomic meta-analyses of AD, ASD, PD, MS, and ALS

Version 1.4 (October 2026). Corrects the accompanying data workbook and the methods supplement; no gene, threshold or rule changes. Workbook: working notes at the top of the GEO_manifest sheet replaced by reader-facing text and one unrelated note removed; placeholder platform entries replaced by pointers to the companion papers; the ALS row of meta_counts_locked updated to the donor-level re-analysis of the same seven cohorts (449 analyzable, 33 FDR < 0.05, 28 high-confidence, median I² 56.7%; earlier locked figures 456 / 26 / 22, median I² 60.6%, recorded in a note row). Methods supplement: header and status updated (methods-and-panel manuscript under review at Molecular Neurobiology); §3 now describes the GEO_manifest sheet; §5 ALS counts and the cross-disease tally updated (53 genes high-confidence in at least two adult neurodegenerative analyses; seven in at least three); §10 AI statement names Grok, Claude and Perplexity. CONSOLIDATED_468_FINAL_7.6.26.xlsx and META_PIPELINE_master.py are deposited as standalone files (unchanged); the v1.0 and v1.1 deposit zips and the v1.2 README are superseded and remain available in earlier versions. Panel, exclusion list, high-confidence rule, AD/PD/MS/ASD counts, PD tables and AD reproduction package are unchanged. Version 1.3 (September 2026). Adds AD_meta_reproduction_package.zip: per-cohort input tables and scripts that reproduce the Alzheimer's disease six-cohort meta-analysis (458 analyzable / 167 FDR-significant / 141 high-confidence genes) gene by gene, together with the sensitivity analyses reported in the revised Alzheimer's disease manuscript (Table S4). The 468-gene panel, the exclusion list, the high-confidence rule and the locked counts are unchanged. Version 1.2 (September 2026). Adds the Parkinson disease per-gene meta-analysis table (419 analyzable genes, 91 FDR-significant, 56 high-confidence) as a standalone workbook and CSV with the locked cohort contrast definitions; the table is identical to the PD sheet of CONSOLIDATED_468_FINAL_7.6.26.xlsx in version 1.1. Adds definitions_locked.csv (status FINAL) and a README that corrects two statements in the version 1.1 README: 10.5281/zenodo.22178094 is the record DOI of version 1.0, not the concept DOI (the all-versions DOI is 10.5281/zenodo.22178093), and the disease-resolved companion papers are posted at Research Square, not SSRN, with the methods-and-panel manuscript under review at Molecular Neurobiology. The 468-gene panel, the 22-symbol exclusion list, the high-confidence rule, the locked counts, and the pipeline are unchanged from version 1.0. ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2059-622X