Apple’s new tool for creating apps to aid medical research may provide autism researchers with easy access to vast numbers of study participants — and data.

By mapping the connections between autism genes, researchers are finding clues to the disorder’s origins. The key, they say, is to begin without bias.

Children with too many or too few copies of certain genes are more likely to have autism, as are children born to women who battled a severe infection while pregnant. These seemingly disparate risk factors may work together to worsen autism symptoms.

Within months of being diagnosed with autism, preschoolers with the disorder may already be on distinct trajectories, according to a study published 28 January in JAMA Psychiatry.  The findings suggest that the severity of autism symptoms does not track with the ability to function in daily life.

Fetal mice that have too many neurons grow to show social deficits and repetitive behaviors. The finding, reported 11 December in Cell Reports, debuts a mouse model of autism that’s based on a biological abnormality seen in some people with the disorder.