Large Sequencing Study Ties Autism Genes to Fragile X

Children with autism carry twice as many new and damaging genetic mutations as typically developing children, according to a large study published today in Neuron.Michael Wigler, professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and his collaborators sequenced the exome, or protein-coding parts of the genome, using DNA isolated from blood cells from 343 children with autism and their family members. The findings lend statistical heft to three other exome-sequencing studies published inNature earlier this month."This fourth Musketeer is the largest of all four, and really puts the nail in the coffin" regarding the abundance of damaging mutations in autism, says Jonathan Sebat, associate professor of psychiatry and cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who was a postdoctoral fellow in Wigler's laboratory but was not involved in the new work.The new study, as well as two of the older papers, tapped into the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC), a genetic and medical repository of some 2,700 families with only one child with autism and unaffected siblings and parents.Unlike the other three papers, the new one also identified intriguing genetic links between autism and fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of intellectual disability. An estimated one-third of children with fragile X are also diagnosed with autism.Read more at...SFARI, April 2012.