NCSTN and Alzheimer disease: Remarkably, a bioinformatic study of the Ciona genome has shown that this organism possesses orthologs of genes associated with AD, including App, presenilin, and nicastrin, among others; these findings, along with the reported ability of ascidian larvae to process human APP695 and form amyloid-like plaques, argue in favor of the use of ascidian embryos for studies of basic mechanisms of AD pathogenesis and response to therapeutics [113].