Scientific American Magazine: Maverick Against the Mendelians

January 17, 2008, 12:00 pm by Scientific American: Health

Ask Michael Wigler about the genetic basis of autism, and he will tell you that the standard genetic methods of tracing disease-causing mutations in families with multiple affected members are not working. Although most scientists agree that environmental influences play a role in disease onset, autism has a strong genetic component: among identical twins, if one is autistic, there is a 70 percent chance the other will show the disease, a risk factor nearly 10 times that observed in fraternal twins and regular siblings. Yet years of time and bags of money have been spent unsuccessfully looking for genes linked to the condition.

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