What Dr MICHAEL LOMBARDO told LOOKING UP

Dr MICHAEL LOMBARDO, research associate at the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK,  told Looking Up: “The Geschwind study looks interesting, and has several intriguing new messages. For instance, cortical patterning of gene expression makes a lot of sense. The idea that frontal and temporal cortex aren’t differentiated by gene expression patterns might tell us something about the autistic cortex possibly being stuck at some earlier stage of development where the cells aren’t fully differentiated in terms of the genes they express.  I’m looking into patterning of fMRI response in autism and it seems really interesting to think that possibly altered patterning of fMRI response across space is due to underlying abnormal patterning of gene expression. 

            “I think the way they analysed the data is interesting too - by looking at networks of genes that are co-expressed, they can reduce the number of statistical comparisons that plagues whole-genome studies like this. If there are multiple genes affecting autism, it might make sense that they are all co-expressed together. The idea being that not just one causes autism, but if you are high in one, you are probably high in a bunch of others, and the multi-variate combination of a bunch of them might be something that enhances risk for developing autism.                 

            “I guess the next step, though, is to look at this kind of brain gene expression early in development of autism.  Gene expression changes throughout development, so if they have found some patterns of post-mortem gene expression (most likely adult brains donated to science), the real question is whether that is the result of living a full life with autism, or whether it’s what was there at the beginning of life that is causally related to them having autism in the first place.”

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