Zachary Villarimo
Research Mentor: Ravi Allada
Mentor Department: Anesthesiology/MNI, Medicine
Author(s): Zachary Villarimo, Greg Wesseling
Session: Session 6 (3:00 PM – 3:50 PM)
Presentation Type: Poster 100
Abstract
A genetic component to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), has long been acknowledged with many individual gene variations often associated with ASD (Yin & Schaaf, 2017). However, research on how these individual genes interact with one another to create the diagnosable features of ASD is lacking. A common feature of ASD are sleep disorders and atypical circadian rhythms which can put a significant burden on caregivers (Ji et al., 2023). With sleep being regulated by transcriptional feedback loops that are conserved inside of both humans and drosophila (fruit flies), and drosophila exhibiting all of the features associated with sleep–behavioral quiescence, reduced responsiveness to stimuli, and homeostatic regulation. Due to these similarities between human sleep and Drosophila sleep, Drosophila can be used as a model to study sleep disorders and circadian rhythmicity, and how they are connected with gene variations associated with ASD using the homologs of ASD associated genes inside of drosophila (Cox & Takahashi 2019). Cox, K. H., & Takahashi, J. S. (2019). Circadian clock genes and the transcriptional architecture of the clock mechanism. Journal of molecular endocrinology, 63(4), R93–R102. https://doi.org/10.1530/JME-19-0153 Ji, Q., Li, S. J., Zhao, J. B., Xiong, Y., Du, X. H., Wang, C. X., Lu, L. M., Tan, J. Y., & Zhu, Z. R. (2023). Genetic and neural mechanisms of sleep disorders in children with autism spectrum disorder: a review. Frontiers in psychiatry, 14, 1079683. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1079683 Yin, J., & Schaaf, C. P. (2017). Autism genetics – an overview. Prenatal diagnosis, 37(1), 14–30. https://doi.org/10.1002/pd.4942
