Gastrointestinal (GI) distress commonly accompanies autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), significantly impacting the quality of life of those affected and their families. Julia Dallman, in collaboration with John Rawls, plans to use zebrafish as an experimental system, since it allows for the GI tract to be imaged and manipulated in live animals. They aim to determine if GI phenotypes in multiple genetic forms of ASD are caused by convergent gut-intrinsic mechanisms. The expected outcomes would open a new field of GI research for ASD that could suggest treatment strategies for managing GI distress in humans.

Understanding how ASD risk genes alter the course of cortical circuit development is necessary to advance targeted therapies. In the current project, Jason Wester plans to investigate how Arid1b mutations in different types of neurons within the mouse cerebral cortex leads to pathological circuit configurations that disrupt information processing.

New technologies for efficiently manipulating genomes have expanded autism research to mammalian models beyond the mouse. Rats are highly social, cooperative animals which, unlike the mouse, live in large social colonies, making them an excellent model species for many of the social characteristics of autism. Peter Kind and colleagues at the Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain plan to generate an in-depth overview of the behavioral repertoire of rats carrying autism-causing genetic alterations. Providing the autism research community with a precise baseline characterization of behavioral phenotypes would help encourage scientific engagement with these models.