Cracking the Autism Code with Matt State

Our ability to diagnose and treat disorders of the mind lags far behind other medical disciplines. For our latest episode, we talked to Dr. Matthew State about why this is the case, and discussed how his research into the genetics of autism is revealing promising paths to future treatments.

Links

• Dr. Matthew State's Lab
• Atlantic Article about the Largest Mental Hospital (A Jail)
• Article about Estrogen Rescuing Phenotype in Fish: 
• "Estrogens Suppress a Behavioral Phenotype in Zebrafish Mutants of the Autism Risk Gene, CNTNAP2"   
• Article about spatial and temporal convergence of autism associated genes during development
• "Coexpression networks implicate human midfetal deep cortical projection neurons in the pathogenesis of autism"
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) statistics

 

Music Attribution

• Dry Air by Podington Bear
• TwilightGrandeur by Podington Bear
• Delta by Podington Bear 

• Artist: Chris Zabriskie
• License
• Songs: 
• Heliograph 
• Cylinder Six and Cylinder Eight 
• Land of the Golden Gate 

• Artist: Twin Musicom
• License
• Song: Lightning on a Blue Sky

Attribution Free Music

• Hydra by Huma-Huma
• Juicy by ALBIS
• Eureka by Huma-Huma
• Nevada City by Huma-Huma

Dapper in the brain: Benjamin Cheyette

Dr. Ben Cheyette is an assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at UCSF. Ben and his lab focuses on signaling proteins that help neurons develop and communicate with each other.

In this week’s episode Dr. Cheyette explains how these signaling pathways originally discovered in the fruit fly relate to psychiatric disorders in humans. He discusses how he became interested in this family of proteins and the research his lab is currently conducting. Using the power of mouse genetics, his lab studies how a protein called Dapper can shape the way neurons form and function in the brain. He is also interested in how mutations in the Dapper gene relate to autism. Finally, at the end of our talk Ben provides some helpful advice to young listeners interested in pursuing a career in science.

More on the Cheyette Lab's research

Hosted by Osama Ahmed