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Autism

Family connections

Nature volume 454, pages 838–839 (2008)Cite this article

Autism is a common neurodevelopmental syndrome with a strong genetic component. The study of autistic individuals whose parents are cousins highlights the genetic diversity of this condition.

Genetically complex human disorders, such as obesity and Alzheimer's disease, also occur in rare inherited forms — that is, a disease-causing mutation arises that can be passed on to the next generation. Studying such rare mutations is a powerful strategy for gaining insight into the mechanisms of the more common forms of a disease1. This is especially true of autism, for which most associated gene mutations that have been identified are either rare or cause syndromic forms of the disorder2,3,4,5,6. Reporting in Science, Morrow et al.7 describe their study of a large group of highly consanguineous families — families in which there were many marriages between cousins — to search for genes connected with increased susceptibility to autism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, Daniel H. Geschwind is in the Program in Neurogenetics, and at the Semel Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, 710 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, California 90095–1769, USA. dhg@mednet.ucla.edu,

    Daniel H. Geschwind

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  1. Daniel H. Geschwind
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Geschwind, D. Family connections. Nature 454, 838–839 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454838a

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