KATIE CAREY FOR SPECTRUMNearly 20 years ago, a new strain of mice debuted in a California laboratory. The mice were missing a gene called SCN2A that helps neurons transmit electrical currents. And the study announcing their genesis was the last word on the matter for many years.
About a decade later, the mouse’s creator, Maurice Montal, sacrificed the few animals left from the colony. He had sent some of his mice to other researchers, and some ended up with a team in Houston, Texas. But they, too, eventually stopped working with the strain.
As the list of genes related to autism grows, more of these models may turn up in long-forgotten studies.
Perhaps the only one who continued to work with the mice was a postdoctoral researcher named Edward Glasscock, who brought the mice from Houston to the University of Louisiana when he launched his own lab. After years of work, Glasscock found that a mutation in SCN2A can muffle the effect of another mutation that triggers sudden death in people with ...
