THE search for the genetic causes of autism has identified another likely candidate.
Dan Arking at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues studied the DNA of 1295 autistic children and their parents. They found that a common variant of a gene called CNTNAP2, which helps coordinate interactions between cells in the nervous system, was often associated with autism.
While many genes are believed to contribute towards the disorder, CNTNAP2 could be a good target for drugs because it is active throughout life, rather than just during development as other such genes are. The results were presented…
