Genetics Research and Autism: What we don’t know could hurt us
July 2, 2006 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
Mention “genetics” in the autism community and the tendency is to think of two things:
- Is autism caused by genetics? And what genes are involved? (Researchers have suggested that anywhere from 15 to 100 genes might be involved.)
- If a prenatal test for autism were developed, and if expecting parents found out their child would be autistic, would they choose to abort the child?
There is a vast amount of information about autism and genetics on the internet—such as this brochure from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and this list of online articles at Neurodiversity.com on autism and genetics.
As an autism parent and a non-scientist, I need help in understanding all of this information, and to put it in the perspective of genetics research as a whole. Dr. Hsien Lei’s Genetics and Health blog provides an excellent (and non-scientist-friendly) resource for learning about the genetics revolution (see her round-up of the best in genetics blogging, Mendel’s Garden).
Genetics and prenatal genetic testing for autism can be fighting words, but they can also be much more—-and it behooves us to be as informed about these topics and autism as we can be.
Hi Kristina
Perhaps you can find interesting these pages about Genetics
http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/33/concept/index.html
For me they were very useful. At the bottom you can click several fields and they are open.
María Luján
Thanks, María! Let me know if there are other websites you’ve found.
As much as some of us concentrate on the role environmental insults may play in triggering ASD, the fact remains that the insult can only play a role if there is a genetic predisposition. We need to know EVERYTHING we can about autism to formulate the appropriate response(s), and that includes a better understanding of genetics than we have now.
Hi Kristina
You can find here
http://www.kevinleitch.co.uk/forum/
in the section about Autism and Genetics and Epigenetics a lot of information ( including videos) about genetics in ASD.Please let me know if you are interested in one topic in particular if you consider I can help you anyway.
María Luján
Hi Kristina
This is an updated page because the old link is not working now in the webpage I provided you above
http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/animations/index.html
María Luján
I’m also hoping that we can keep on talking about what learning more about the genetics of autism means for our understanding of autism.