Dementia is caused by different disorders that affect parts of the brain responsible for memory, thinking, language, emotion and behavior. Dementia affects over 50 million people worldwide, with Alzheimer's disease accounting for 50-60% of cases (https://www.alzint.org). Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is tightly associated with the abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta peptide and microtubule-associated protein tau (MAPT) in the brain. Amyloid Beta forms amyloid plaques between neurons, whereas hyperphosphorylated tau proteins form twisted strands called neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) within neurons, both of which represent key phenotypic characteristics of AD.

BioGRID curators collaborated with experts in the Alzheimer's field (including Jean-Pierre Roussarie, Paul Greengard, and others) to generate a list of genes that play roles in either amyloid beta production or in Tau protein modification, including phosphorylation, ubiquitination, aggregation, folding, cleavage, and clearance. These gene sets were used to confirm the biological prediction analyses published in Selective Neuronal Vulnerability in Alzheimer's Disease: A Network-Based Analysis by Roussarie JP, et. al. Neuron. 2020 Sep 9;107(5):821-835.e12. Details about how these gene lists were generated are available in the methods section of this publication in supplementary table S4. The corresponding molecular interactions for these AD-related genes were manually curated from the scientific literature by BioGRID curators to produce an Alzheimer's specific dataset. This project page allows users to explore the expert-curated Amyloid Beta gene set and Tau modifiers (NFT) set, as well as any relevant protein interactions, post-translational modifications (PTMs) and chemical interactions.

The Alzheimer's Disease curation project is on-going and will be updated each month. If you notice errors or missing interactions/publications in this dataset, or otherwise wish to contribute to this project, please contact us at support@thebiogrid.org. All Alzheimer's database records are freely available for download from links within this project.