gene expression

terrific letter to the editor in the TIMES today:

Autism researchers are only beginning to assemble a wealth of observational details into a coherent theory of what causes autism.

Different subsets of these observations can evoke competing testable hypotheses (which are healthy for science) and competing ideologies (which are not).

As your article notes, the vaccine idea has been epidemiologically tested and not borne out. It seems time to move on.

I worry, though, that this vaccine controversy has steered the field away from environmental causes in general. As a brother and uncle to two people with autism, I am keenly aware of the role of genetics. But genes can affect responses to the environment, and the environment can influence gene expression, making the genetic-environmental dichotomy a false one.

One truth our work has taught us is that the perturbations of brain development that lead to autism are usually the product of multiple interacting causes. Surely autism research has room for all of these, and for all of us.

Matthew Belmonte
Ithaca, N.Y., June 18, 2007

The writer is an assistant professor of human development at Cornell University.

Ed says this is the clearest and most succinct statement of the relationship between genes and environment he's seen.