Delphine Fradin, Keely Cheslack-Postava, Christine Ladd-Acosta, Craig Newschaffer, Aravinda Chakravarti, Dan E. Arking, Andrew Feinberg, M. Daniele Fallin

Autism is a common heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex etiology. Several genome-wide linkage and association scans have been carried out to identify regions harboring genes related to autism or autism spectrum disorders, with mixed results. Given the overlap in autism features with genetic abnormalities known to be associated with imprinting, one possible reason for lack of consistency would be the influence of parent-of-origin effects that may mask the ability to detect linkage and association.