Genes involved in autism, schizophrenia may be activated in womb

The genes suspected of causing autism, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are activated in the developing brain before birth, according to a major genetic analysis.

The study by researchers at Yale University also spotted hundreds of genetic differences between males and females still in the womb.

"We knew many of the genes involved in the development of the brain, but now we know where and when they are functioning in the human brain," said study senior author Nenad Sestan, an associate professor of neurobiology and researcher for Yale's Kavli Institute for Neuroscience, in a university news release. "The complexity of the system shows why the human brain may be so susceptible to psychiatric disorders."

In conducting the study, researchers examined more than 1,300 tissue samples taken from 57 people at different stages of brain development, ranging from 40 days after conception to 82 years. They tracked thousands of human genes to determine which are involved in development, where they are located and when they are "expressed," or activated.

The study, published in the Oct. 27 issue of the journal Nature, revealed a significant amount of the human brain is shaped before birth. For instance, the researchers found proof that genes linked to autism and schizophrenia are activated while in the womb.

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Science Probes How Probiotic Yogurts Affect Your Gut

'Friendly' microbes might affect metabolism, but whether they're good for you is still unclear, researchers say

Researchers have put the health promises of popular probiotic yogurts to the test and found they may alter the way in which food is metabolized.

But whether that means probiotic foods and supplements can improve your health remains to be seen, they said.

"Federal regulatory agencies are increasingly interested in evaluating all the health claims being made by probiotic food manufacturers," said study co-author Dr. Jeffrey Gordon, a biologist and director of the Center for Genome Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, in St. Louis. "So what we did was try to develop a model for the human gut that can give us a way to measure the effects."

What they saw, Gordon said, "is that adding a few billion of these microbial organisms to a gut community already containing tens of trillions of bacteria can, in fact, influence the metabolism of food ingredients. The structure of the microbe community doesn't change. But the function does."

Funding for the research came from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Danone Research, an arm of the food conglomerate that makes Dannon probiotic yogurt Activia.

The study is published in the Oct. 26 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

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