Among the bloodletting boxes, ether inhalers, kangaroo-tendon sutures and other artifacts stored at the Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis are hundreds of scuffed-up canning jars full of dingy yellow liquid and chunks of human brains.
Until the late 1960s the museum was the pathology department of the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane. The bits of brain in the jars were collected during patient autopsies performed between 1896 and 1938. Most of the jars sat on a shelf until the summer of 2010, when Indiana University School of Medicine pathologist George Sandusky began popping off the lids.
Frustrated by a dearth of postmortem brain donations from people with mental illness, Sandusky—who is on the board of directors at the museum—seized the chance to search this neglected collection for genes that contribute to mental disorders.
Sandusky is not alone. Several research groups are now seeking ways to mine genetic and other information hidden in old, often forgotten tissue archives—a handful of which can be found in the U.S., along with many more in Europe. Several technical hurdles stand in the way, but if these can be overcome, the archives would offer several advantages. Beyond supplying tissues that can be hard to acquire at a time when autopsies are on the decline, the vintage brains are untainted by modern psychiatric drugs and are often paired with detailed clinical notes that help researchers make more accurate post hoc diagnoses.
“There are probably a fair number of these collections around the country that grew out of state hospitals,” says John Allman, professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology. “It is an untapped resource. If it were carefully planned and reasonably funded, it could become quite a valuable thing.”
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On June 26, 2000, three famous men — one president, two scientists — made a big announcement at the White House. Two independent teams — one public, one private — had published a first draft of the human genome, or as one of the scientists called it, the “book of life.” It was a feat. It would change the world. It would “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases,” 
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a public discussion about the future of genomics at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. My favorite part of the evening was when Paul Billings, chief medical officer at Life Technologies, pulled out of his pocket his company’s latest genome sequencer: a square chip, about the size of a quarter. Next year, he said, researchers will be decoding whole genomes with this device for about $1,000 each.
Researchers have uncovered cellular abnormalities in Timothy syndrome by regenerating neurons from individuals with the rare autism-related disorder, according to a study published 27 November in Nature Medicine.
In the brains of individuals with autism, chemical changes to histones, proteins entwined with DNA, tend to show up near genes linked to the disorder, according to a study of postmortem brains published 7 November in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
Some forms of autism are caused by too many proteins at the 
Since the unveiling of the first draft of the 
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