Gene Genie Wonders About Spontaneous Mutations and Autism

Gene Genie is coming to Genetics and Health and you can be a part of it! Send me your post about genes and/or gene-related diseases and I’ll include it in a round-up this Saturday, March 24. Be on the lookout for some magical genetic moments.

This morning, Genie is wondering how spontaneous deletions and duplications of DNA, aka copy number variation, scattered throughout the genome could be involved in autism spectrum disorders. Maybe they’re the result of some other injury that led to both autism and the mutations? Maybe it’s selection bias? The people in the study with autism must differ in other ways from healthy controls. Were all known and unknown factors controlled for? Genie reserves judgment until she knows more about what the biological importance of these hundreds of mutations. For more discussion, visit Kristina Chew at Autism Vox.

Medical News Today, March 20, 2007

Tags: autism, autism spectrum disorder, genetics, genes, dna, diseases, illness, health, medicine, genetics, genes, gene genie, genome, dna, copy number variation