Male and female human fetuses show distinct patterns of gene activity and DNA regulation in the cerebral cortex, according to a new analysis of thousands of individual brain cells. The study offers one of the most detailed maps to date of how such activity differs between boys and girls’ brains during the second trimester. It […]
Exhale: In mice with a mutated copy of the TCF4 gene (right), nerve cells (pink) are in short supply compared to controls (left). Courtesy Daniel Mulkey The breathing difficulties in children with Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, a rare form of autism, stem from dysfunctional circuitry and a malignant sodium channel in the brain stem, according to a […]
Leveraging cross-species data on the evolution of proteins can help understand subtle genetic variants in people with autism and identify hundreds of new genes that may contribute to the condition, according to a new analysis. The work focuses on “missense” variants that alter a single amino acid in a protein and often have mild effects. […]
