Cerebrovascular disease is a group of brain dysfunctions related to disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain. Hypertension is the most important cause; it damages the blood vessel lining, endothelium, exposing the underlying collagen where platelets aggregate to initiate a repairing process which is not always complete and perfect. Sustained hypertension permanently changes the architecture of the blood vessels making them narrow, stiff, deformed, uneven and more vulnerable to fluctuations in blood pressure.
Defying conventional epigenomic wisdom, the non-conventional polycomb (PRC)1 variant paradoxically overwhelms the conventional PRC-mediated gene silencing in activated endothelial cells.
Researchers at UC San Francisco have cataloged all of the cells that make up the blood vessels in the human brain, as well as their positions and the genes produced.