A genotype resource for postmortem brain samples from the Autism Tissue Program.
A free bank of 52 autism brain genomes is ready for you to explore.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists collected 52 post-mortem brains from people with autism. They ran full genome scans on every sample. The goal was to build a free, shared data bank for autism gene research.
All tissue came through the Autism Tissue Program. The team checked that DNA quality stayed high across every brain.
What they found
Every sample gave clean, usable genotype and copy-number data. No brains had to be thrown out. The data set is now open to any researcher through the ATP portal.
How this fits with other research
Tolezano et al. (2024) later showed that 1 in 5 kids with microcephaly carry rare, harmful copy-number changes. Their review likely pulled data from the same ATP bank started here.
Wang et al. (2020) screened autism tools in China. They used older papers that could have compared findings against the ATP genomes for quality checks.
Long et al. (2023) deleted a single gene in zebrafish and saw autism-like behaviors. They can now cross-check their fish data against the human ATP genomes to see if that gene is changed in people.
Why it matters
You now have a free, high-quality genome bank to back up your behavioral data. If a parent asks about genetic testing, you can point to this solid reference set. You can also follow new gene findings and see if they match the behaviors you treat every day.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The Autism Tissue Program (ATP), a science program of Autism Speaks, provides researchers with access to well-characterized postmortem brain tissues. Researchers access these tissues through a peer-reviewed, project-based approval process, and obtain related clinical information from a secure, online informatics portal. However, few of these samples have DNA banked from other sources (such as a blood sample from the same individual), hindering genotype-phenotype correlation and interpretation of gene expression data derived from the banked brain tissue. Here, we describe an initiative to extract DNA from Brodmann Area 19, and genotype these samples using both the Affymetrix Genome-Wide Human SNP Array 6.0 and the Illumina Human1M-Duo DNA Analysis BeadChip genome-wide microarray technologies. We additionally verify reported gender, and infer ethnic background from the single nucleotide polymorphism data. We have also used a rigorous, multiple algorithm approach to identify genomic copy number variation (CNV) from these array data. Following an initial proof of principle study using two samples, 52 experimental samples, consisting of 27 subjects with confirmed or suspected autism and related disorders, 5 subjects with cytogenetically visible duplications of 15q, 2 with epilepsy and 18 age-matched normal controls were processed, yielding high-quality genotype data in all cases. The genotype and CNV data are provided via the ATP informatics portal as a resource for the autism research community.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2011 · doi:10.1002/aur.173