Exploring Parkinson's through the Lens of Genomics and Bioinformatics

Within the last three decades, revolutions in genomics data generation and bioinformatics analysis techniques have profoundly impacted our understanding of the molecular mechanisms of Parkinson's disease (PD). From the description of the first PD-associated risk gene in 1997 through today, new technologies have revolutionized approaches to identify genetic and molecular mechanisms implicated in human health and disease. Spurred by the dramatically decreasing costs for genotyping, genome sequencing, and transcriptomics approaches, the ability to profile large cohorts of human populations or model organisms has accelerated the understanding of disease susceptibility, pathways, and genes. Thus far, ∼30 genetic loci have been unequivocally linked to the pathogenesis of PD, highlighting essential molecular pathways underlying this common disorder. More recently, the advent of single-cell transcriptomics techniques applied to human brain tissue has implicated cell-type-specific dysregulation and vulnerability (beyond the loss of dopaminergic neurons) in the disease. Herein, we discuss how neurogenomics and bioinformatics are applied to dissect the nature of this complex disease with the overall aim of identifying new targets for therapeutic interventions.