“Synaptic, Transcriptional and Chromatin Genes Disrupted in Autism”, Silvia De Rubeis, Xin He, Arthur P. Goldberg, Christopher S. Poultney, Kaitlin Samocha, A. Ercument Cicek, Yan Kou, Li Liu, Menachem Fromer, Susan Walker, Tarjinder Singh, Lambertus Klei, Jack Kosmicki, Shih-Chen Fu, Branko Aleksic, Monica Biscaldi, Patrick F. Bolton, Jessica M. Brownfeld, Jinlu Cai, Nicholas J. Campbell, Angel Carracedo, Maria H. Chahrour, Andreas G. Chiocchetti, Hilary Coon, Emily L. Crawford, Lucy Crooks, Sarah R. Curran, Geraldine Dawson, Eftichia Duketis, Bridget A. Fernandez, Louise Gallagher, Evan Geller, Stephen J. Guter, R. Sean Hill, Iuliana Ionita-Laza, Patricia Jimenez Gonzalez, Helena Kilpinen, Sabine M. Klauck, Alexander Kolevzon, Irene Lee, Jing Lei, Terho Lehtimäki, Chiao-Feng Lin, Avi Ma’ayan, Christian R. Marshall, Alison L. McInnes, Benjamin M. Neale, Michael J. Owen, Norio Ozaki, Mara Parellada, Jeremy R. Parr, Shaun Purcell, Kaija Puura, Deepthi Rajagopalan, Karola Rehnström, Abraham Reichenberg, Aniko Sabo, Michael Sachse, Stephan J. Sanders, Chad Schafer, Martin Schulte-Rüther, David Skuse, Christine Stevens, Peter Szatmari, Kristiina Tammimies, Otto Valladares, Annette Voran, Li-San Wang, Lauren A. Weiss, A. Jeremy Willsey, Timothy W. Yu, Ryan K. C. Yuen, the D. D. D. Study, Homozygosity Mapping Collaborative for Autism, U. K. K. Consortium, the Autism Sequencing Consortium, Edwin H. Cook, Christine M. Freitag, Michael Gill, Christina M. Hultman, Thomas Lehner, Aarno Palotie, Gerard D. Schellenberg, Pamela Sklar, Matthew W. State, James S. Sutcliffe, Christopher A. Walsh, Stephen W. Scherer, Michael E. Zwick, Jeffrey C. Barrett, David J. Cutler, Kathryn Roeder, Bernie Devlin, Mark J. Daly, Joseph D. Buxbaum2014-10-29 (rare mutations, autism, neuroscience; backlinks):
The genetic architecture of autism spectrum disorder involves the interplay of common and rare variation and their impact on hundreds of genes.
Using exome sequencing, analysis of rare coding variation in 3,871 autism cases and 9,937 ancestry-matched or parental controls implicates 22 autosomal genes at a false discovery rate (FDR) < 0.05, and a set of 107 autosomal genes strongly enriched for those likely to affect risk (FDR < 0.30). These 107 genes, which show unusual evolutionary constraint against mutations, incur de novo loss-of-function mutations in over 5% of autistic subjects.
Many of the genes implicated encode proteins for synaptic, transcriptional, and chromatin remodeling pathways. These include voltage-gated ion channels regulating propagation of action potentials, pacemaking, and excitability-transcription coupling, as well as histone-modifying enzymes and chromatin remodelers, prominently histone post-translational modifications involving lysine methylation/demethylation.