New statistical method finds shared ancestral gene variants involved in autism's cause
While much more is at stake, the same principle applies when scientists try to measure genetic factors that cause disease. In a paper appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , geneticist Michael Wigler of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), Kenny Ye (Albert Einstein) and colleagues use a new mathematical method to assess the role of genetic variants in determining a trait -- in this case, autism. (Autism is to be understood as interchangeable with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, in this story.) The new approach finds what Wigler believes is the first rigorous statistical evidence that ancient variations in the human genome contribute to autism -- each, most likely, having a very small effect. (Devastating variants tend to be recent and are regularly weeded out of the genome; those who have them rarely are less likely to have offspring, meaning the damaging gene is less likely to be transmitted.) Past studies have sought to identify causal autism...