Studies Map Gene Expression Across Brain Development

• By: Virginia Hughes SFARI.org
• January 1st, 2014
• autism genetics, brain development, fetal brain development, gene expression, genetic heterogeneity, glutamatergic neurons, neural networks, research, science, synapse function
• 1971    0

Now that genetic studies have implicated several hundred genes in autism, researchers are turning their attention to where and when in the healthy young brain these genes are expressed. The first two studies to tackle these questions appeared on November 21, 2013 in Cell. One report, led by...

Study Finds That Autism Genes are Surprisingly Large

• By: Virginia Hughes SFARI.org
• October 1st, 2013
• autism candidate genes, DNA transcription, gene expression, genetic mutations, genetics, long genes, neuronal development, science, synaptic function, topoisomerases
• 1754    0

Enzymes called topoisomerases are crucial for the expression of extremely long genes in neurons, according to a study published 5 September in Nature1. More than one-quarter of these genes are known autism candidates, the study found. In the process of doing these analyses, the researchers...