Researchers from a consortium of 44 universities and research institutions in the United States have identified four new genes linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). These genes could provide clues to the causes of the disease and subsequently lead to the discovery of more effective drugs to treat or cure this degenerative disease. Genetic studies could also help scientists better understand the mechanisms that occur in the brain even before the symptoms are observed.

The genes mentioned in the paper are MS4A, CD2AP, CD33, and EPHA1.

SynaBlast-Mega™ is a multiple sequence alignment tool that enables users to search for several protein or nucleotide sequences simultaneously. This tool makes it easier for researchers to analyse bulk sequences as it allows the submission of numerous sequences at any given time. Comprehensive alignment options are provided and the final results are presented in various alignment output formats. Researchers can use this application to discover protein homologs within other species of the multiple AD-susceptibility genes. This information would add value to studies on AD progression that use model organisms.

Source : Science Daily

Click here to get the test sequence pre-loaded.

Key in a name that you can easily remember in the ‘Job title’ box.

Click on the ‘Submit query’ button.

Click on image to zoom

Once your query submission has been completed, download your results file, which will be in a .zip format, by clicking on ‘Download result file’.

Click on image to zoom

The downloaded file can be extracted using programmes such as WinRAR or 7zip. You can right click on the file within the extractor and select ‘View file’ which will display the results of your alignments.

The file can also be viewed using WordPad.

Looking through the alignments, you can see that all the genes have close homologs within many other species.

These species can be used as model organisms to study the expression and interactivity of the genes within pathways that lead to AD.

Click on image to zoom