Since I blogged on autism recently I figured I would toss this one out to my reader(s):
Grandparents ‘may relay autism risk to grandchildren’
The risk of developing autism may be passed on through – and not just to – future generations, researchers say.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21857403
There has been increasing evidence that epigenetic (see here Wiki page) changes can be passed down through the generations. It is plausible that some portion of what triggers autism is from epigenetic changes that our parents, grandparents and even great grandparents received and passed down through the generations. What might be making tracing the genetic component (if any) in autism so challenging is that it might not be due to mutations at all, it might be due to epigenetic changes. Right now getting epigenetic data is quite challenging (something I hope will change with my DNA sequencing invention) so it is hard to do the sort of population studies to winkle out the associations.
