Why Make Neurons from Children with Autism?

It sounds like science fiction: turning skin cells into brain cells in the lab. But in the past four years, stem cell researchers have figured out the ingredients of the chemical soup needed to reprogram skin cells into stem cells, which can, in turn, be differentiated into a host of different cell types.Ricardo Dolmetsch, assistant professor of neurobiology at Stanford University, is one of the pioneers in this field. He is trying to create iPS neurons from people with Timothy syndrome, a rare single-gene disorder that causes heart arrhythmias, intellectual impairment and social and communicative problems typically seen in autism.Yesterday, I chatted with Dolmetsch about why this approach should be applied to autism research. Check out the video at...SFARI, November 2010.