Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is consistently diagnosed 3 to 5 times more frequently in males than females, a dramatically sex-biased prevalence that suggests the involvement of sex-differential biological factors in modulating risk. The genomic scale of transcriptomic analyses of human brain tissue can provide an unbiased approach for identifying genes and associated functional processes at the intersection of sex-differential and ASD-impacted neurobiology.
Year: 2021
A new computational pipeline connects disease and discovery at the cellular level
Could Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia be biologically connected?
Daifeng Wang, PhD – Slide of the Week
Understanding cell-type-specific gene regulatory mechanisms from genetic variants to diseases remains challenging. To address this, we developed a computational pipeline, scGRNom (single-cell Gene Regulatory Network prediction from multi-omics), to predict cell-type disease genes and regulatory networks including transcription factors and regulatory elements.
Houri K. Vorperian, PhD – Slide of the Week
Title: Auditory-Perceptual Features of Speech in Children and Adults with Down syndrome: A Speech Profile Analysis Legend: Table 6 – Principal component loading matrix, first four principal components, vowel features. Note. The largest loadings (in …
UCEDD project to address health equity for Latino families of children with developmental disabilities
Padres e Hijos en Acción and the Waisman Center UCEDD announced a $330,000 grant to improve local health care responsiveness to the needs of Latino families of children with developmental disabilities and other special health care needs in Dane County.
Brittany G. Travers, PhD – Slide of the Week
Title: Associations among daily living skills, motor, and sensory difficulties in children with and without autism Legend: The goal of this study was to determine how motor skills relate to daily living skills in children 6-10 …
John Svaren, PhD – Slide of the Week
Title: CRISPR-Cas9 deletion of PMP22 super enhancer creates a new model of hereditary neuropathy with liability to pressure palsies (HNPP) Legend: (A) Morphometric analysis demonstrates axonal loss i thin section were taken from 3- to 5-month-old …
Second seat in Waisman cluster hire filled by neuroscientist André Sousa
Sousa is the second hire in the cluster initiative that includes a biostatistician, a neuroscientist, and a geneticist.
Audra Sterling, PhD – Slide of the Week
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS) are neurodevelopmental disorders with overlapping pragmatic language impairments. Prior work suggests pragmatic language differences may run in families. This study examined specific pragmatic difficulties (i.e., linguistic mazes and perseverations) in boys (9–18 years) with idiopathic ASD (n = 26) and FXS+ASD (n = 29), and relationships with maternal maze use.
André Sousa, PhD – Slide of the Week
Human nervous system development is an intricate and protracted process that requires precise spatiotemporal transcriptional regulation. We generated tissue-level and single-cell transcriptomic data from up to 16 brain regions covering prenatal and postnatal rhesus macaque development.