New LIGA EWAS on memory performance

10. January 2023

The year 2022 ended highly successfully for the LIGA team with a publication on the relation between DNA methylation and human memory performance. The study, which was spearheaded by LIGA PhD student Yasmine Sommerer, utilized DNA extracts from over 1000 buccal and blood samples collected under the auspices of the Lifebrain consortium project and subjected them to an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) using episodic memory (EM) performance as outcome. Overall, this work identified 21 loci showing at least suggestive evidence of association with either cross-sectional or longitudinal EM. Among these loci were several which have been linked to either Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease in previous work by us and others. The study was published in the journal Biomedicines and constitutes the second first-author publication by Yasmine in her PhD – congratulations!