Missing protein may cause autism
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From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Autism and other brain disorders may be the result of a missing protein important for building communication networks in the brain, MIT researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron.
They found that lack of an enzyme called Cdk5, which instructs a synapse-building protein called CASK, leads to a severe deficit in the formation of synapses.
Other research has suggested that a deficiency of synapses is associated with autism.
