Interested more in ideas than in dominating a crowded field, Michael Wigler decided to apply his expertise in cancer genetics to studying poorly understood features of autism.
Several new genetic variants associated with schizophrenia lie in regions important for immune function and associated with autism. This suggests that both disorders stem partly from abnormal activation of the immune system, say some researchers.
In the late 1990s, after Daniel Geschwind had established himself as an expert on the genetics of neurological diseases, a personal connection abruptly pulled him into autism research. Since then, he has participated in dozens of studies probing the genetic basis of autism and related neuro-developmental disorders.
In the past few months, researchers have published dozens of reports linking single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with susceptibility to a range of common diseases.
Rare, spontaneous mutations could account for at least ten percent of cases of schizophrenia, according a study published online last week.
At first glance, the waiting room at the Ministry of Health Hospital in Muscat, Oman, may look different than that of your average American hospital. Men dressed all in white and women in black burqas wait in separate rooms, even if they are members of the same family. But talking to these families soon reveals just how similar they are to their American counterparts, says Christopher Walsh, a neurologist who has studied neurodevelopmental disorders in the Middle East for nearly 10 years.
For parents of children with autism, bedtime can be a boondoggle.
Following a series of papers in the past two years, what seems irrefutable is that copy number variations ― in which a particular stretch of DNA is either deleted or duplicated ― are important in autism.
Are older fathers more likely to have children with autism? A series of epidemiological studies is giving credence to the idea, suggesting that, with age, sperm may accumulate damage that increases risk in the next generation.
In a paper published today in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have identified a segment containing 25 genes on chromosome 16 that was deleted or duplicated in roughly one percent of children with autism.