“Mutant mice” and autism genetics

By deleting the PTEN gene in parts of the hippocampus and the frontal lobe of the brain, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have created mice that display some autistic behaviors. EurekAlert refers to these mice rather sensationally as “mutant mice.”

The “autistic traits” observed in the mice seem to me to refer to only some aspects of autism. As Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lee writes at Genetics and Health:

We’re at the point where new relationships between genes and disease are being discovered without fully understanding the biology underlying the relationship.

Here is Dr. Lee’s overview of these “PTEN knockout mice.”