Project description:Autism Spectrum Disorders includes several behavioral phenotypes in addition to other comorbid conditions. One of the strongest comorbidities in Autism is gastrointestinal issues. Gastrointestinal issues are also prevalent in individuals with mutations in CHD8, which is one of the top autism-related genes. However, the relationship between autism related genes, such as CHD8, gastrointestinal function, and autism related behaviors are yet very unclear. In this study our goal is to explore the molecular mechanism and connection between CHD8 KO and gastrointestinal problems.
Project description:Heterozygous loss-of-function mutations or deletions of the MEF2C gene cause a neurodevelopmental disorder, termed MEF2C Haploinsufficiency syndrome (MCHS), that is characterized by autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, seizures, and other neurological symptoms. In mice, global Mef2c heterozygosity produces numerous behavioral phenotypes reminiscent of MCHS. MEF2C is highly expressed in multiple cell populations in the developing brain, including GABAergic inhibitory neurons. While MEF2C hypofunction in excitatory neurons or microglia alter neurotypical behaviors and brain circuit function, the impact of MEF2C heterozygosity in GABAergic neurons remains unknown.
Project description:Despite the identification of numerous autism susceptibility genes, the pathobiology of autism remains unknown. The present âcase-controlâ study takes a global approach to understanding the molecular basis of autism spectrum disorders based upon large-scale gene expression profiling. DNA microarray analyses were conducted on lymphoblastoid cell lines from over 20 sib pairs in which one sibling had a diagnosis of autism and the other was not affected in order to identify biochemical and signaling pathways which are differentially regulated in cells from autistic and nonautistic siblings. Bioinformatics and gene ontological analyses of the data implicate genes which are involved in nervous system development, inflammation, and cytoskeletal organization, in addition to genes which may be relevant to gastrointestinal or other physiological symptoms often associated with autism. Moreover, the data further suggests that these processes may be modulated by cholesterol/steroid metabolism, especially at the level of androgenic hormones. Elevation of male hormones, in turn, has been suggested as a possible factor influencing susceptibility to autism, which affects ~4 times as many males as females. Metabolic profiling of steroid hormones in lymphoblastoid cell lines from several pairs of siblings reveals higher levels of testosterone in the autistic sibling, which is consistent with the increased expression of two genes involved in the steroidogenesis pathway. Global gene expression profiling of cultured cells from ASD probands thus serves as a window to underlying metabolic and signaling deficits that may be relevant to the pathobiology of autism. Gene expression profiling of LCL from autistic (21) and nonautistic (17) siblings (4 sets of autistic twins included) were obtained using a custom-printed DNA microarray containing 39,936 elements (TIGR 40K Human array, GPL3427) and a reference design in which each sample was compared to the Stratagene Universal Human RNA standard. Following data normalization, the ratios of expression values for the autistic proband relative to his normal unaffected sibling were determined. Related siblings are identified by their common family ID# (AU****) as provided by the Autism Resource Genetic Exchange (AGRE) repository (and listed in Sample title). Differentially expressed genes were determined across all ratioed expression values for sib pairs (autistic vs. control) using one-class SAM (Statistical Analysis of Microarrays) analysis.
Project description:Despite the identification of numerous autism susceptibility genes, the pathobiology of autism remains unknown. The present “case-control” study takes a global approach to understanding the molecular basis of autism spectrum disorders based upon large-scale gene expression profiling. DNA microarray analyses were conducted on lymphoblastoid cell lines from over 20 sib pairs in which one sibling had a diagnosis of autism and the other was not affected in order to identify biochemical and signaling pathways which are differentially regulated in cells from autistic and nonautistic siblings. Bioinformatics and gene ontological analyses of the data implicate genes which are involved in nervous system development, inflammation, and cytoskeletal organization, in addition to genes which may be relevant to gastrointestinal or other physiological symptoms often associated with autism. Moreover, the data further suggests that these processes may be modulated by cholesterol/steroid metabolism, especially at the level of androgenic hormones. Elevation of male hormones, in turn, has been suggested as a possible factor influencing susceptibility to autism, which affects ~4 times as many males as females. Metabolic profiling of steroid hormones in lymphoblastoid cell lines from several pairs of siblings reveals higher levels of testosterone in the autistic sibling, which is consistent with the increased expression of two genes involved in the steroidogenesis pathway. Global gene expression profiling of cultured cells from ASD probands thus serves as a window to underlying metabolic and signaling deficits that may be relevant to the pathobiology of autism.
2009-07-27 | GSE15451 | GEO
Project description:Autism Spectrum Disorders
| PRJEB57750 | ENA
Project description:Fungi, Friend or Foe? A Mycobiome Evaluation in Children with Autism and Gastrointestinal Symptoms
Project description:Hundreds of genes are implicated in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but the mechanisms through which they contribute to ASD pathophysiology remain elusive. Here, we analyzed leukocyte transcriptomics from 1-4 year-old male toddlers with ASD or typical development from the general population. We discovered a perturbed gene network that includes genes highly expressed during fetal brain development and which is dysregulated in hiPSC-derived neuron models of ASD. High-confidence ASD risk genes emerge as upstream regulators of the network, and many risk genes may impact the network by modulating RAS/ERK, PI3K/AKT, and WNT/-catenin signaling pathways. We found that the degree of dysregulation in this network correlated with the severity of ASD symptoms in the toddlers. These results demonstrate how the heterogeneous genetics of ASD may dysregulate a core network to influence brain development at prenatal and very early postnatal ages and, thereby, the severity of later ASD symptoms.
Project description:To assess the clinical impact of splice-altering noncoding mutations in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we used a deep learning framework (SpliceAI) to predict the splice-altering potential of de novo mutations in 3,953 individuals with ASD from the Simons Simplex Collection. To validate these predictions, we selected 36 individuals that harbored predicted de-novo cryptic splice mutations; each individual represented the only case of autism within their immediate family. We obtained peripheral blood-derived lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) and performed high-depth mRNA sequencing (approximately 350 million 150 bp single-end reads per sample). We used OLego to align the reads against a reference created from hg19 by substituting de novo variants of each individual with the corresponding alternate allele.
Project description:Purpose: The goal of this study was to compare gene expression patterns in the male and female human cortex Methods: We performed RiboZero Gold (rRNA depleted) 50bp PE RNA-seq in a set of control samples of both sexes to identify sexually dimorphic gene expression patterns. Results: Within these samples, we corroborated findings from a discovery set of RNA-seq data from adult human cortex tissue from the BrainSpan consortium which demonstrated male-biased expression of astrocyte marker genes and a gene co-expression module found to be up-regulated in the adult autistic cortex. Conclusions: These findings suggest that sex-differential risk for autism spectrum disorder is not the result of sex-differential regulation of ASD risk genes, but of naturally occurring sexually dimorphic processes that modulate the impact of risk variants for autism spectrum disorder. 13 cerebral cortex samples from 10 individuals (7 samples from 5 males, 6 samples from 5 females). Three Samples are included in this study from Series GSE64018. **PLEASE NOTE: Raw data has been submitted to dbGAP**