Unraveling the Genetic Etiology of Autism

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Autism is a neuropsychiatric disorder exhibiting a complex genetic etiology with significant clinical and locus heterogeneity. Autism predominantly affects males compared to females, leading to significant interest into the etiology of sex bias in disease risk or expression. We propose to pursue promising initial studies implicating a network of loci critical for the development and regulation of central serotonergic function. We will determine the nature and extent of susceptibility associated with the serotonin (5-HT) transporter (SLC6A4) and integrin 33 (ITGB3) loci, which lie within a chromosome 17q11-21 region conferring significant male-biased genetic risk in autism. Similarly, the 5-HT-1A receptor gene (HTR1A) shows allelic association that is more pronounced in male probands. The 5-HT transporter (SERT) and 5-HT1A receptor are lynchpins in the control of serotonin concentration and function in the CMS, and emerging data reveals the synergistic actions of SERT and ITGB3 in mediating elevated 5-HT levels in the circulation, a hallmark of many patients with autism. We propose to (1) fully elaborate an allelic heterogeneity framework for disease risk at SLC6A4, (2) the functional nature of putative SLC6A4 risk alleles, (3) characterize genetic risk indexed by significant association with functional alleles at ITGB3 and HTR1A, (4) determine the degree to which allelic interaction or epistasis involving this network may contribute to disease risk and abnormal function, (5) develop a rich phenotypic dataset on additional autism families to more fully understand the genotype-phenotype correlations attributable to susceptibility alleles identified in this project, (6) explore the extent of disease risk in relation to other key molecules in this network by testing the hypothesis that risk alleles also exist at loci encoding these proteins. Through this project, we will substantially advance our understanding of how genetic variation affects expression and function of proteins controlling development and interconnection of a vital neurotransmitter system that is implicated in the etiologies of autism and many other disorders.