Study Shows Environmental Influences May Cause Autism in Some Cases Research by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University may help explain how some cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can result from environmental influences rather than gene mutations. The findings, published online today in PLOS Genetics, shed light on why older mothers are at increased risk for having children with ASD and could pave the way for more research into the role of environment on ASD. The research is in PLOS Genetics. (full open access) Research: “Mosaic epigenetic dysregulation of ectodermal cells in autism spectrum disorder” by Esther R. Berko, Masako Suzuki, Faygel Beren, Christophe Lemetre, Christine M. Alaimo, R. Brent Calder, Karen Ballaban-Gil, Batya Gounder, Kaylee Kampf, Jill Kirschen, Shahina B. Maqbool, Zeineen Momin, David M. Reynolds, Natalie Russo, Lisa Shulman, Edyta Stasiek, Jessica Tozour, Maria Valicenti-McDermott, Shenglong Wang, Brett S. Abrahams, Joseph Hargitai, Dov Inbar, Zhengdong Zhang, Joseph D. Buxbaum, Sophie Molholm, John J. Foxe, Robert W. Marion, Adam Auton, John Greally in PLOS Genetics. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004402 (dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1004402) Image: Methylation of CGs in WGCNA modules associated with ASD status. (A) The heat map reflects unsupervised clustering of methylation values of CGs in the “light green” module significantly associated with ASD alone. Clear segregation of ASD (orange) and TD (blue) individuals can be seen in these CGs. The bottom panel shows the corresponding eigengenes for each individual. (B) Known ASD genes (red) and those from each of the two WGCNA modules (green shades) with connecting genes (grey) showing extensive interactions, and the linking of separated ASD gene groups by those identified in the current study. Credit Berko et al./PLOS Genetics. #autism #genetics #neuroscience
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 22:38:20 +0000
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