Individuals who carry a large and rare deletion on chromosome 16 that is associated with autism are likely to have developmental delay, be obese, or both, according to two studies published last week in Nature.The deletion, known briefly as 16p, covers a 25-gene stretch of chromosomal region 16p11.2. It crops up in roughly 0.6 percent of all cases of autism. Some studies have found the variant in individuals with other psychiatric conditions, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and even in healthy controls.The new reports are the first to search for obesity-related rare variants across the genome and the first to link 16p — or any other rare DNA deletion or duplication — to obesity.Read more at...SFARI, February 2010.