DNA markers in low-IQ autism suggest heredity
Wednesday, July 3, 2013 - 14:00
in Biology & Nature
Researchers who compared the DNA of patients with autism and intellectual disability to that of their unaffected siblings found that the affected siblings had significantly more "runs of homozygosity," or blocks of DNA that are the same from both parents. The finding suggests a role for recessive inheritance in this autism subgroup and highlights homozygosity as a new approach to understanding genetic mechanisms in autism.