Tweny-three Chromosome Pairs? Try 1,000!
Every once in awhile, maybe once in a blue moon, you may read something that’s so left-field, so alien that it literally changes your fundamental concepts. For me that happened […]
Tag Archives: genetics
Our Obsession with the Synapse in Autism – Is It Really that Simple?
Ever since synaptic gene mutations were discovered in autism, the scientific world has been obsessed [1, 2]. Interestingly, however, these synapse-specific genes make up only a small minority of autism […]
Our latest publication: High-risk genes for autism function in the nucleus and regulate gene expression
Over the last year and a half, I’ve been studying rare forms of intellectual disability (ID) that have single-gene (monogenic) origins using various bioinformatics approaches. My primary interest was to […]
Nonrandom Mating and its Relationship with Autism, ADHD, and Schizophrenia
When choosing romantic partners, we’re all familiar with the phrase “like attracts like”. Ironically, however, this phenomenon is all too often overlooked in modern genetics studies. In a recent study […]
Neuronal Excitability & Schizophrenia
In comparison to autism, schizophrenia has had a longer history of study. Yet in recent times, research into the condition seems to have received less money than autism itself, most […]
Mutation Patterns in Simplex Cases of Autism
There’s been a lot of study of copy number variants (CNV) in autism over the last decade or so. Far from beating a dead horse, a recent publication in Neuron […]
A Personal Story about Cancer, Autism, & DPD Deficiency
For the last few years, my mother has been battling colorectal cancer. In 2012, the primary tumor was removed, all lymph nodes appeared clear, and the pathologist, surgeon, and oncologist […]
The Endoplasmic Reticulum, Epilepsy, & Cell Stress
Scientists, especially geneticists, are often over-focused on the nucleus of a cell. After all, it holds the basic blueprints for all the gene products our cells make, right? Unfortunately, because […]
Autism: Reading the Brain in the Face
The human embryo develops three basic germ layers, which each give rise to various and occasionally overlapping structures. This is known as the Germ Layer Theory, originally proposed by Karl […]
Changes to Nervous System Patterning in Autism
A good deal of my recent work has been focused on studying deviations to neuronal identity in relation to autism etiology. Though we use the term “neuron” to describe large […]
Science Over a Cuppa 
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