In the past few years, several studies have implicated fathers’ age more strongly than mothers’ in increasing autism risk. Although older fathers have more spontaneous mutations in their sperm than younger fathers do, no one has shown that these accumulating mutations contribute to autism risk in their children, argues Daniel Weinberger.

The symptom severity of three girls with fragile X syndrome tracks with how much the levels of the fragile X protein in their blood differs from that of their unaffected mothers. If the results, published 29 January in Molecular Syndromology, are confirmed in a larger study, they may help doctors predict how the disorder will manifest in girls.

Researchers have mapped interactions between hundreds of variants of proteins made from known autism risk genes, they reported 11 April in Nature Communications. The highly connected network reveals that autism genes tend to interact with each other and with many more partners than suspected.

Children born to fathers older than 45 years have a heightened risk of developing a range of conditions, from autism to addiction, according to a large Swedish study published 1 April in JAMA Psychiatry.

Mutations in a gene associated with DNA packaging may lead to autism and intellectual disability, suggests a study published 16 February in Nature Genetics.

It takes more mutations to trigger autism in women than in men, which may explain why men are four times more likely to have the disorder, according to a study published 26 February in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

A new paper accomplishes a rare feat, linking human genetics with physiology, behavior and a therapeutic in a compelling mouse model of autism, says Alan Packer.

Two large Scandinavian studies confirm the long-standing theory that older men have a higher risk of fathering children with autism, but they disagree on how a mother’s age drives risk of the disorder.

Spontaneous and rare mutations, particularly in genes related to networks that regulate neuronal connections, contribute a small but significant proportion of the risk for schizophrenia, report two large studies published online 22 January in Nature.

A newly discovered spontaneous mutation, described 27 August in Molecular Psychiatry, links autism to changes in the regulation of the chemical messenger dopamine.