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Autism: highly heritable but not inherited

Nature Medicine volume 13, pages 534–536 (2007)Cite this article

The genetic basis of autism is beginning to come to light. De novo mutations in gene copy number may have a big role.

Until recently, only 5–10% of autism cases were traceable to an underlying genetic cause. Two studies now change this. Jacquemont et al.1 and Sebat et al.2 suggest that this number is actually 10–20%, and it may grow to 30–40% with further research. The advance is based primarily on the use of a recently developed high-resolution genome analysis technique to identify de novo genomic deletions and duplications of tens to thousands of kilobases (kb).

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  1. The author is in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, Texas 77030, USA. abeaudet@bcm.tmc.edu,

    Arthur L Beaudet

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  1. Arthur L Beaudet
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Competing interests

The author is at Baylor College of Medicine as Chair of the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, which generates revenue by offering array CGH on a fee-for-service basis in collaboration with Athena Diagnostics using custom arrays from Agilent Technologies.

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Beaudet, A. Autism: highly heritable but not inherited. Nat Med 13, 534–536 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0507-534

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