With the drastically increased prevalence (which improved or over diagnosis cannot account for) we must look for environmental triggers or factors. Gene changes simply do not happen this quickly. To be clear, I am not dismissing looking for genes, but there are many diseases which are environmental in cause but can be exasperated by a wide variety of genes, i.e. for which we would not attribute the cause to genes/a single sequence alone.
New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
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Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Older parents is the presumption.
assortative mating - a certain 'type' of person going to college and meeting people they reproduce with - is also implicated.
Was this the polite way of saying "older, smart people"?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/ (Autism As a Disorder of High Intelligence [2016])
> The hypothesis that autism risk in offspring is positively associated with high parental intelligence, and high socioeconomic status, traces to Kanner (1943, p. 248), who stated, referring to autistic children, that “they all come of highly intelligent families,” at high levels of educational, socioeconomic and occupational achievement (Kanner and Lesser, 1958; Rimland, 1964). King (1975) reviewed a set of demographic studies motivated by these findings, and reported strong support for the pattern of high socioeconomic status linked with autism, including support from studies (e.g., Lotter, 1966, 1967) that checked all young children (of 8–10 years) in a given geographic area for infantile autism, and thus should be largely independent of confounding ascertainment or help-seeking biases, variation in access to relevant health care, or variation in parental awareness.
Note that these observations are 60+ years old. Read the entire "Socioeconomic status" section of the paper I cite. They argue the same and state genetic testing should be done to back it up. These seems an ideal study for 23andme (yes, yes, I know how a vocal minority feels about this org).
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but it's dependent on a lot of things. Some chromosomal areas are more important than others. In humans and other mammals, it also matters from which parent the DNA came from (paternal DNA is different from maternal DNA, but a woman will 'rewrite' her father's chromosomes when passing it on to her child and a man his mother's, etc). Any variation in these things could cause developmental disabilities. However, t…
Sorry this isn't accurate at all. We don't 'rewrite' any chromosomes. Sometimes during errors in replication changes occur, but these are random. They presumably happen approximately equally in both parents contribution to your DNA (though I don't know this to be 100% confirmed empirically).
Not in terms of primary sequence, but imprinting has an impact on expression and is parentally determined.
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#34Would this mean gene-therapy could potentially undo autism? Also, since I believe it's now actually agreed upon that autism rates actually ARE increasing, and not just increased diagnoses, is there any candidate theory as to why mutations would be higher in developed countries recently?
Older parents is the presumption.
> It is possible that the connection runs the other way: Men who are likely to father a child with autism may have children relatively late in life. These men may have autism traits that delay their ability to find a partner.
ahaha, all of us here just got implicated in one stroke
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-l...
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#35With the drastically increased prevalence (which improved or over diagnosis cannot account for) we must look for environmental triggers or factors. Gene changes simply do not happen this quickly. To be clear, I am not dismissing looking for genes, but there are many diseases which are environmental in cause but can be exasperated by a wide variety of genes, i.e. for which we would not attribute the cause to genes/a s…
[deleted]
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t believe it exists without benefit. Nature can certainly phase parts of our system out over time (appendix) but to say it is without benefit is a bold statement. I’d argue that we simply don’t know the purpose and dismissing it as non-beneficial is arrogant or naive. Science should be based around evidence rather than lack of.
What is the benefit of having an arch in the nose vs not having one? Or the benefit in light brown hair vs dark brown hair? Or the benefit in light brown eyes vs dark brown eyes? How about the benefits in male pattern baldness where some of the hair on the scalp is affected by high levels of DHT and some aren't? How about diffused baldness where the way in which a person balds isn't in one particular place and is all…
I can absolutely appreciate that we are a series of mutations.
To say that there is no benefit or detriment to having an arched nose or not also seems naive. It’s likely that the shape of your nose can affect how much air passes to your lungs, how likely it is to be sun burnt or not, and many other things. Just because the values or benefits might be minuscule compared to other things doesn’t mean they do not exist. Tiny optimizations are common in all systems and they should not be overlooked.
To say that massive portions of our DNA “have no benefit” without having proof of such, seems naive to me. It’s ok for others to disagree; clearly the majority of the scientific community does. It’s just unfortunate that we have been ignoring the possibility that this large portion of our DNA could have effects on our system. In the article above, it’s not benefits that matter but risks. We shouldn’t only care about parts of our body that may bring benefit but also those which may harm us.
As far as baldness goes, this is a trait that could be seen as a benefit. Some females may desire a mate with high levels of DHT and baldness is a good indicator that a being has high levels. There are many visual traits (see birds) that allow the narrowing of selection for potential mates.
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#37I can't believe somebody downvoted this. Some people must really hate anything that challenges their life choices.
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#38How naive or arrogant do scientists have to be to think that we have “junk” DNA that doesn’t affect how we develop? Wouldn’t it be much more useful to classify things we don’t understand as “unknown purpose X” so that more people are inclined to study them? /end venting
How is that naive or arrogant?
The history of science, and especially biology, suggests that there is a lot of stuff which isn't understood very well. Seeing no importance in an aspect of the natural world can be as much a comment on experimental design and human knowledge ("knowing what to look for") as on the phenomenon ostensibly being studied. Typically "being able to observe an effect" is contingent on some other dependent scientific "knowledge".
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#39Would this mean gene-therapy could potentially undo autism? Also, since I believe it's now actually agreed upon that autism rates actually ARE increasing, and not just increased diagnoses, is there any candidate theory as to why mutations would be higher in developed countries recently?
Autism is also hereditary, right? Maybe it has a high enough probability of being passed on through the genes that it is causing the rate to increase over time. It may just be a fluke and we'll see it decrease again over time.
Re: New Causes of Autism Found in Noncoding DNA
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Junk DNA means non coding and without benifit. Due to the random nature of mutation such sequences are expected. However, verifying any specific sequence is useless is difficult. One important consideration is sequence length may have value even if the content is meaningless. Another is random sequences may aid long term adaptation even if they don’t currently do anything. So, if anything Junk is a fairly descriptive…
But junk is perjorative word which suggests that it is entirely disposable even desirable to remove. That may turn out to be true but the experiment required to prove that thesis would require closely observing a biological systems evolution and disease evolution for some length of time, with "junk" DNA somehow removed and repressed. It may turn out to be a sort of filler with certain characteristics that work out to…
> But junk is perjorative word which suggests that it is entirely disposable even desirable to remove
That's subjective.
> It may turn out to be a sort of filler
Yes, that's understood and recognized in every analysis.
> the name for it is very presumptive.
Naming is hard. The lowest common denominator (least amount of thought/simplest concept) will almost always persist. It's not like someone is wringing their hands in the background imagining they have fooled the scientific community.