I the aspie gene is recessive...

Post Reply New Topic

Would a child of an Aspie and an NT non-carrier be NT then?

Sure doesn't seem to be recessive.

My Grandmother, my mother, my sister and I are all Aspie (best that I can figure out).

Of course there are advantages to being on the Spectrum but there are some disadvantages, too.

Problem is, there's more than one gene involved in producing an Aspergers or Autistic person. It's how these genes are expressed that matters.

There's a free Autism course available on iTunes that talks about this.

It may be biological, but not genetic. Something to do with how the brain forms in utero as opposed to the actual genes of the developing fetus.

? Please share references? I had not heard this before. It would seem that those cases that tend to run in families there would have to be some kind of genetic variable, no?

But I don't think it follows the recessive/dominant patterns of inheritance such that one is a "carrier" of Autism, like Tay-Sachs or something of that nature. At least it doesn't seem like it when I think through my family and families I know well enough to consider.

Finding out I'm an aspie has to do with the fact I realized my son was one first.

there were aspies on both sides of my family.

Autism isn't based on simple dominant/recessive genetics. It is caused by multiple genes, and most likely other environmental factors as well. I'm a starting genetics major, and I believe that Autism is inherited like skin color. Take this chart for example.

Like Autism, skin color occurs as a spectrum. Skin color ranges from nearly white to dark brown, just as Autism ranges from mild to severe. If you compare Autism to the above chart, a NT would have all light alleles. An person with one or two dark alleles would have traits, but wouldn't be diagnosed with any form of Autism. A person with three or four dark alleles would be an Aspie. Someone with more than four dark alleles would have classic Autism. I don't think anyone knows what genes cause Autism, but I believe that they are inherited in the way I explained above.

A whole lot of genes have been linked to autism. No single one is the sole culprit and there's almost certainly some level of interaction between genes and environment that has to occur. It's definitely a whole lot messier than the standard dominant vs recessive inheritance that everybody learns in high school. Even in single gene traits there are other types of inheritance (incomplete dominance, co-dominance, and some other more obscure ones related to sex chromosomes and genes with more than two alleles and you probably get the picture) so something linked to a long list of genetic factors is obviously going to be hideously complicated.

Just to make things even more fun, current research is focusing on copy-number variations on genes. And while many seem inherited, some are de novo mutations, appearing in the genetic structure of neither parent. And in some patients, inherited and new mutations seem to be intermixed. Whee!

If there was just one gene involved, the children would be NTs and would stand a 50% chance of being carriers.

However, it doesn't appear that a single gene is responsible.

And most probably, since afterall different genes give different survival and reproduction advantages, some of these genes are more common and some are less common.

And in the following post:

?Too many Clostridia bacteria as one cause of autism?
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt207147.html

I excerpt parts from an article in The Economist, I think, rather preliminary claims that some persons have their autism caused by too much Clostridia bacteria in the gut.
1) The body uses up sulphur stores since sulphate is a defense against these bacteria in turf wars.
2) Some autistic persons have impaired sulphur metabolism anyway, and
3) sulphur is (one of many) substances involved in brain development.

The article also claims:

Many persons on the Spectrum have intestinal issues. (This is certainly a generalization, now the question is, whether it's a good generalization.)

And the article made the intriguing point that picking up the same gut bacteria from your mother and other family members is another way diseases and conditions can run in a family, where you can have approximate, inexact inheritance (of the microbiome and not just the human genome).

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/health/research/scientists-link-rare-gene-mutations-to-heightened-risk-of-autism.html?pagewanted=all