Faculty Candidate Seminar: Brett Trost, PhD

Faculty Candidate: Brett Trost, PhD SickKids Research Institute

Host: Timothy R. Hughes, PhD

Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 Time: 3:00 p.m. via Zoom

The genomic architecture of autism: from single nucleotide variants to tandem repeat expansions

Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental condition characterized by social/communication difficulties, repetitive behaviours, and restricted interests. In this talk, I will describe how we have used whole-genome sequencing data from large cohorts of families with autism to better understand how different types of rare genetic variation affect autism susceptibility, including single nucleotide variants, indels, structural variants, mitochondrial variants, and tandem repeat expansions. I will also discuss the substantial gap between the estimated heritability of autism (~75%) and the proportion of autism cases that can currently be genetically explained (~15%), along with potential strategies for addressing this “missing heritability”. Read more details on the Faculty Candidate Seminar.