Clues to autism revealed in copied genes

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Clues to autism revealed in copied genes
Thu, 03-22-2007 - 4:08pm

Clues to autism revealed in copied genes
22 March 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition.

Duplications or deletions of portions of the genome may cause many -
if not most - cases of autism.

Such errors can alter the number of copies of particular genes in the
regions affected. These copy-number variations are 10 times as common
in autistic children as in other children.

A team led by Jonathan Sebat of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long
Island, New York, examined 118 families that have one autistic child
and 99 families with children who are not autistic. Ten per cent of
the autistic children, but only 1 per cent of the other children, had
copy-number variants in their genomes that didn't appear in their
parents (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1138659).

The copy-number variants tend to affect different genes in each
autistic child. This suggests that autism is not caused by a single
genetic defect.

From issue 2596 of New Scientist magazine, 22 March 2007, page