December 10, 2009
The upcoming issue of TIME magazine includes research from a team of Penn Medicine and CHOP autism genetics experts among it's Top Ten Medical Breakthroughs of 2009. The team first reported that multiple gene variants, both common and rare, may raise the risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in the journal Nature in April. The first study suggested that a particular genetic variation, found on a cluster between CDH10 and CDH9 on chromosome 5, is found in about 15 percent of children with autism, according to co-senior author Gerard Schellenberg, PhD, professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The second study identified missing or duplicated stretches of DNA along two crucial gene pathways. Both studies detected genes implicated in the development of brain circuitry in early childhood.