Date: March 9, 2006 Time: 11:00 A.M.-12:30 P.M. Title:  A New Paradigm For Complex Disease - The Case Of Autism Speaker: Eli Hatchwell, MD, PhD Investigator, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories Where:  Waisman Conference Center Room T216, Second Floor, North Tower About the Talk: Substantial effort has been expended in recent years in an attempt to unravel the biological basis of a variety of complex disorders, with few significant positive results. In particular, work on the autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) has yielded little that can be considered definitive. Our approach, based on a different view of such disorders, aims to interrogate the genomes of individuals directly, rather than rely on statistical methods which are based on powerful underlying assumptions, which we believe are largely false. Specifically, we believe that complex disorders are unlikely to be primarily caused by the interaction of multiple alleles of weak effect. Rather, individuals with complex disorders likely represent a heterogeneous group, in each of whom a single major allele is likely to be found causative. There are multiple precedents for this view and few for the alternative, more widely held one. I shall present our work using genomic copy number analysis to interrogate the genomes of a cohort of individuals with ASD, as part of a multi-disciplinary study, which takes all aspects into account, including detailed clinical/dysmorphological assessments and brain imaging. Preliminary results suggest that our thesis has validity, in that specific, single, causative genetic alterations have been found in specific subsets of individuals within our cohort. For Further Information: Contact Teresa Palumbo at 263-5837 or palumbo@waisman.wisc.edu The Waisman Center Seminar Series is partially funded by the Friends of the Waisman Center and NIH grant P30 HD03352.   To download an Adobe Acrobat file of the entire seminar series schedule click here. (pdf schedule coming soon!)