Autism and genetic imprinting

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I just read a COOL article on new ideas about autism being linked to genetic imprinting... What is that?

You have 2 sets of chromosomes... 1 from mom and 1 from dad... both sets each code for the same genes on homologous pairs (matching chromosomes)... What most people don't know is that there are some wars going on between these two sets of chromosomes during your development where each set wants to be responsible for expressing any particular gene in you as you develop. The specific chromosomes expressing genes (and thus the counterpart chromosome not expressing genes) change during serveral points of our development (dna methylation)... and it's kinda like a flip-flop war in some aspects as to what the final version (which copy) will be expressed for any one of your genes when development is done.

I was reading how they're starting to think this war-process may have something to do with autism... like a failure to completely mask or imprint one of the chromosomes (aka-have a clear cut winner for gene expression in the war between any two of your homolougous chromosomes)... this would result in abnormal gene expression... as opposed to simply trying to find a mutated/damaged gene (which in reality, is just a diff sequence of DNA...which would be WAY too easy of a solution for autism imo, even if it were several genes)

Epigenetics stuff is so cool. I think this is a great direction to look toward for research cause it's looking at the problem at another level.... It's not merely about FINDING THE AUTISM GENE(S)... but it's more about learning how our genes are regulated... which is something we don't know all too much about, realistically. It's the only reason we can't really successfully clone stuff now or have a lot of successful gene therapies... There is a whole other level of regulation that we know virtually nothing about. If autism is epigenetically-regulated... it would explain a lot... like we may not even have "bad genes"... our DNA could be perfectly fine... but there's just something going wrong with the machinery that "reads" our DNA to make us properly.

Anyway... lol time to go work.

Hmm, that is interesting! Well, then we can say our genes settled down more quickly than NT's!!

Another victory for the Spectumites!!

Oh, right... well erm, uh... *does not know what to say*

I don’t know about this fight. Can you tell me where you found it and if there is a source available in the Web? The name of the author would be of help.

I have another problem somehow correlate. I should put this question to the experts, Uta Fritz or Baron Cohen or someone else. Anyhow here is the problem: is the genetic cause of autism a matter of all or nothing? Or in other terms: is it possible that the gene responsible for social interaction is not missing, but sometimes defective and in different ranges of gravity. That would seem the case, given that we have mild autism or severe autism etc.

Does this correlate with the psychological definition of Imprinting?

I am more to the propoonent that it can be explained more easily via Social Egineering and Individualism.

-I really believe that it has nothing to do with genes.... and am starting to ponder upon the possibility of actually creating Autistic traits in adults.

--Realy all you need to do is feed them too much information.... untill thier head explodes ,, which I think is what is going on from the time of conception.

When the babies brain first becomes 'self aware' - if it's too early, like for example if thier still in the womb and haven't got feet yet, then when they are born walking won't be one of thier strong pionts. --so in reality, the baby is developing the thinking parts before the pysical parts - in effect the mother is spwaning an entity which may never even need a body - maybe one day a baby won't Pop Out - it will just Ascend,,, (Maybe that's what a Misscarriage is)

Childhood is a new concept. Even recently it ended at seven, and after seven years of work it was time for marriage. School consisted of a few years of reading, writing, and cyphering. All modern time, say since Rome where people lived to 42, but slaves were not people, brings life down to 35 years or less. They barely lived long enough to see their grandchildren.

Childhood was invented by the Victorians. There are lots of pictures of boys of five wearing baby dresses, with long hair. It was an upper class thing. Where a short while before children dressed the same as adults, now they were kept as dolls, and dressed much younger than they were. Victorians worked hard to banish sex. Children were kept innocent, sixteen year old girls were dressed like they were eight, and were playing with dolls. It seems to have worked, girls sexual maturity came between sixteen and eighteen. Longer school was part of the program.

Children were bathed by servants, so they would not touch themselves, and tucked in, with their hands outside the covers, to sleep with a servant watching. The language changed to fit, tables no longer had suggestive legs, they now had limbs. Innocence, a fear of god watching them at all times, and days in the charge of a school master, raised a generation of old children who had to be told about sex the night before they were married. That was only a hundred years ago.

What the upper classes did was followed by those who could afford it. Few went to the university, most who did went for a Doctor of Divinity. The Gay 90s lived in denial, The Rouring 20s rebelled. Flappers did run around in a short undergarment. As the upper classes expanded they continued to isolate children, and ret*d their development, The University was a way to prolong childhood.

Nature has her own ways and the age of sexual maturity in females has been dropping, over the last hundred years it has dropped five. Now 11 to 13 is normal. Compared to photographs of which we have 150 years, not only do children now have more of a baby face, young adults look like the preteens of a hundred years ago. It is not just aspies, childhood now lasts into the twenties, and they have the face of a young teen of a hundred years ago.

I have heard it called Neonatalisum, looking more baby like. We do not look much like adult chimps, but the baby faces look very human.

This change was to fast for natural selection, early sexual maturity, long childhoods, and baby faces have come in the last hundred years. Changing learning patterns have put new demands on the brain. Up until 1950 an education would serve for a working lifetime. Since then industries vanish, change radically, and learning second and third careers later in life is now the norm.

Brains are switching from a lot of instinct, and three years of school, then a life of work, to twenty years of school, and mental not phyical labor, that changes over life. Aspies who naturally mature at 40, but continue life long learning, seem to be the direction taken.

This is all to quick for selection, evolution, and from the rate, mutation is the best word.

The last big mutation was about 20,000 years ago, all skulls before that time were round, about equal side to side, and front to back. A bigger brain made a bigger skull, and it would not fit down the birth canal. As the pelvic opening is oval, long head babies were born, as wide as before, but a greater distance front to back. The skulls were considerably thinner, flexible, and a big headed baby could be squeezed out like toothpaste. In a short time there are only long heads.

They did take over, but not by eating roundheads, the same thing happened in South America, and in Asia, at the same time. Humans are like bamboo, you can take cuttings, grow them all over earth, and after a hundred years or so the parent plant flowers, and dies, and so do all of the cuttings, no matter where, or how old.

Making a bigger brain has not reached its limits, Cromagnon had a larger one, so did Neanderthal. Developing the synapses, moving from random which has worked, but is limited, to a pattern constructed after birth, then building a nural net from the data of the time seems to be aspie.

Humans only use 11% of their brain, firing random. My own experance has been I was a slow starter, I have a hard time learning what I cannot file, but after I built the system, I am a very fast learner, and I forget nothing. Where others can produce a flash of light, I can keep the bulb glowing, and produce flashes.

When humans grew up and went to work at seven, we were very slow learners. Now many reach that point at twenty-five, and we at forty. Now it is the twenty-five percent that go to college, but more are finishing high school, none go to work at seven, and you can only marry at fourteen in Mississippi and Alabama. The overall trend is upward.

Mutation happens at the DNA level, the rest follows. Neonatalisum, early sexaual maturity, and a one point per decade rise in overall IQ scores cannot be blamed on MTV, pollution, or anything else. The evidence is there to show a continous curve for the last hundred years.

We are the model of what everyone will be rather quickly. A hundred years ago the Wright Brothers were thinking about powered flight, what will people be thinking in another hunderd years?

Ah, and how does mutation occur? Is it an accidental slip all on its own, or is it the environment affecting the genes?

Refined sugar introduced into the diet started a plethora of dental problems from cavities to crooked teeth, and the dental changes in humans continued until it is common for our younger people not to have wisdom teeth. In less than a hundred years.

I don't assume a direct link with refined sugar, as many other things happened in the environment that could have contributed to these changes, but between the type of diet through the ages, the type of activities from the macro-physical to synaptic function, the changes and expectations of the the type of thinking needed to operate in the now, and near future, suggests and intricate and fascinating dance between the micro and macro worlds, one I find fascinating.

Metta, Rjaye

ToothPaste!! !


uhh I wish I could experience giving birth! ,if only it was so hilarious -it's been 2 mins now I think I can stop,, no

uhhhh that was good.

Nw to business..

Title: The primordial soup.

Even matter is influenced by outside forces .. of course we 'mutate' according to our environment... that's why we have legs, to move along ground, vs. the fish which enjoys swimming. --I think though as we start to realise that our envirnment doesn't just include what we see around us (We as humans conceptualise thing like the atom and the universe) we soon start to 'skip' a generation in the evolutionary time line... being stuck on the planet we decided that the best thing is to walk, not fly (I wish we had of though) -- somehow a higher being or just the absolutness of pure calculation has spawned us, to conceptualise and caclulate... our only decision as a race is ,, do we want our fellow brothers on the planet/univers/conceptunknown . to follow our footsteps, the dog and the cat, the dolphins the amoeba the bacteria, the virus and matter in itself. .. do we all go together?? or do we individually ASPIFY! ---hmm I just thought of a good Techno song Lyric.

The other byproduct question to all of this is,,, do we want to retain our history/memory --as we ASPIFY!