DNA "glitches" tied to autism, researchers say - Yahoo

[lumberjack_jeff]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070315/hl_nm/autism_dna_dc_1

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Little glitches in the DNA of people with autism suggest that the disease might be caused by as many as 100 different genes, researchers reported on Thursday.

The study is one of several new reports on autism in recent months, which have shown the disease is far more common and more complex than many experts had believed.

"These findings certainly complicate the search for genes contributing to autism. These are rare changes, dispersed across the genome, and they tell us that autism may be the final common path for many different genetic abnormalities," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health, which helped fund the study.

The small changes are not what people usually think of as genetic mutations but are called copy number variations -- extra copies or missing stretches of DNA. For instance, one child with Asperger syndrome was missing DNA from a stretch of 27 genes.

[sam sarrha]

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