This project aims to study pharmacological tools that enhance energy production efficiency in neurons as a way to enhance learning and memory in individuals with fragile X syndrome.

Crabtree and Gleeson will focus on rare high-impact genetic mutations for factors in the BAF complex to test how links between neuronal activity and the epigenome may be interrupted in ASD.

Stephanie Bielas will use the Asxl3 knockout mouse to assess how alterations in histone H2A ubiquitination influence the transcriptome and cell fate of neural progenitor cells during corticogenesis. These findings will help to unveil mechanisms of dysregulation that lead to autism.

Lukens and Zunder will utilize transcriptomics, mass cytometry and data-driven science to uncover cellular and molecular underpinnings of sex bias in an MIA model of autism.

The Noonan lab will systematically identify ASD regulatory networks in the developing brain at high resolution, revealing cellular and developmental mechanisms underlying ASD risk.

Giraldez and Krishnaswamy will combine novel genetic and computational methods to study how mutations in ASD-risk genes affect healthy brain cell development.