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Autism Spectrum Disorder Working Group Leadership

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Melanie Wit, MSc

Outreach Committee Liaison

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Jing Zhang

Data Intake Officer

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Jakob Grove

Data Access Committee Representative

Work with us!

If you have questions regarding the PGC ASD workgroup or projects that are currently being conducted, please contact the workgroup chairs.

For any questions or ideas related to research dissemination (e.g., via this webpage, social media, blogs, press outlets), please contact the workgroup outreach liaison.

If you have questions about how to access summary statistics or genotype-level data, or are interested to submit a secondary analysis proposal, please contact the workgroup data access committee representative.

About Us

Our History

The ASD-PGC working group was founded at the start of PGC, in 2008, and includes currently 48 investigators from 30 institutions, representing 10 countries. Our interdisciplinary membership ranges from distinguished faculty to junior investigators from all of the academic disciplines required for this collaborative work, including epidemiology, statistical genetics, and clinical psychiatry/psychology.

Our Motivation

  1. Expand to include >100,000 ASD cases
  2. Enhance ancestral diversity
  3. Identify (much) more of the genetic risk variation, including the interplay between common and rare risk variation.
  4. Improve understanding of genetic risk variants’ impact on pathophysiology
  5. Dissect the heterogeneity of case subgroups
  6. Enhance prediction of pertinent outcomes

Get Involved!

Currently, we are looking for new collaborators with genotyping and autism data in order to increase our sample size for our next large-scale genome-wide meta-analyses of ASD.

If you would like to be a part of these efforts, please contact the work group leaders Elise Robinson and Anders Børglum.

Publications

Weiner et al. Statistical and functional convergence of common and rare genetic influences on autism at chromosome 16p. Nat Genet. 2022 Nov;54(11):1630-1639

 

Mattheisen et al. Identification of shared and differentiating genetic architecture for autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and case subgroups. Nat Genet. 2022 Oct;54(10):1470-1478.

 

Warrier et al. Genetic correlates of phenotypic heterogeneity in autism. Nat Genet. 2022 Sep;54(9):1293-1304

 

Verhoef et al. Discordant associations of educational attainment with ASD and ADHD implicate a polygenic form of pleiotropy.  Nat Commun. 2021 Nov 11;12(1):6534.

 

Grove et al. Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder. Nat Genet. 2019 Mar;51(3): 431-444.

 

Autism Spectrum Disorders Working Group of The Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Meta-analysis of GWAS of over 16,000 individuals with autism spectrum disorder highlights a novel locus at 10q24.32 and a significant overlap with schizophrenia.. Mol Autism. 2017 May 22;8:21.

 

Weiner et al. Polygenic transmission disequilibrium confirms that common and rare variation act additively to create risk for autism spectrum disorders. Nat Genet. 2017 Jul;49(7):978-985.

 

Cross-disorder group of the psychiatric genomics consortium. Genomic Relationships, Novel Loci, and Pleiotropic Mechanisms across Eight Psychiatric Disorders. 2019 Dec 12;179(7):1468-1482.

 

Brainstorm Consortium. Analysis of shared heritability in common disorders of the brain. 2018 Jun 22;360(6395).

Funders