WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Deleting a gene region previously associated with autism can cause mice to exhibit autism-like behaviors and brain changes. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today (October 3), suggest that at least some of the genes in that region may play a role in a small percentage of autism cases in humans, and could be the basis for new mouse models of autism.
“The nice thing is we now have, for the first time, an experimental pathway in the mouse to try to narrow which genes are important [in autism] and which genes are not,” said cancer biologist Arnold Levine at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who was not involved in the work.
Since 2007, researchers ...
