By analyzing stem cells derived from baby teeth, researchers have tracked a child’s autism to mutations in a gene called TRPC6. The molecular saga highlights a painless way to probe the role some genes play in autism.
It’s no easy feat to whittle down the list of the most influential autism papers to a mere 10. So please consider this but a taste of the burgeoning field, presented in chronological order and based on suggestions from many researchers.
This year was full of big headlines in autism research. But the biggest stories aren’t necessarily the best — here are some gems you may have missed over the year.
A new computational approach predicts how sequence variations in both the coding and noncoding regions of a gene affect the gene’s expression. The method, described today in Science, may help researchers understand how specific variants contribute to disorders such as autism.
Getting to a diagnosis of autism or another neurodevelopmental disorder is a long and frustrating experience for some families — especially when it comes to finding the underlying genetic cause. DNA sequencing could ease this arduous journey.
Researchers are taking a second look at dozens of autism candidate genes, sequencing them in thousands of individuals to bolster the evidence linking them to autism.
To optimize the search for autism genes, researchers should collect large numbers of sequences — but the sequences need to be of the right kind, says Michael Ronemus.
Each child with autism is different from the next. One approach rapidly gaining momentum makes sense of this diversity by grouping children together based on their genetics, then looking for patterns in their symptoms. The long-term aim: personalized treatments for each subtype of autism.
A rare form of autism linked to a duplication of the 15q11-13 chromosomal region shares a molecular signature with more common forms of the disorder, suggests unpublished research presented yesterday at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Monkeys living in natural groups show individual variations in social behavior that may help scientists understand autism and identify treatments for the disorder, according to unpublished studies presented at the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington, D.C.