Profile: Simon Fisher

As a graduate student in genetics in the mid-1990s, Simon Fisher spent his working hours painstakingly trying to decode the DNA sequence of a piece of the X chromosome. Outside of the lab, though, he was fascinated by a far less tractable question: How does the human brain learn language?

Fisher still remembers poring over The Language Instinct, the 1994 bestseller by linguist Steven Pinker. One chapter describes the ‘K family’ of London, three generations of relatives made famous in 1990 for their problems in forming plural words and recognizing tenses. The large number of relatives with these specific grammatical difficulties, according to Pinker, suggested the existence of “grammar genes.”

Fisher, a young gene hunter, was captivated by the story. “I remember saying to my girlfriend at the time, who’s now my wife, ‘Gol, it’d be amazing to get your hands on this kind of family,’” Fisher recalls.

Two years later, Fisher took a postdoctoral position in the Oxford University lab of Anthony Monaco, who was screening DNA from families that included one or two members with autism. Fisher's job was to start screening the DNA in similar families, except with a history of dyslexia or specific language impairment (SLI). The latter is a disorder characterized by language problems without any other physical or cognitive disability.

Just a few weeks after Fisher arrived, Monaco asked him offhandedly if he was interested in analyzing DNA samples from a large London family with SLI. Fisher looked at the pedigree, labeled ‘KE family,’ and recognized it immediately. “I said, ‘I’ll do it, I’ll do it,’” Fisher recalls, laughing. “It was almost like I was primed to do this. It completely fell in my lap.”

In 2001, Fisher and his team reported in Nature the gene responsible for the famous family’s language quirks: FOXP2, a ‘master switch’ that controls the expression of other genes, including some linked to autism. He’s been digging into FOXP2’s biology ever since.

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SFARI.org, May 2013.

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