New research results from the Australian Autism Biobank study

On May 12, 2021, Jake Gratten and Naomi Wray presented findings from the Australian Autism Biobank study, an initiative to establish an Australian resource of biospecimens, phenotypes and genomic data for autism research.

Their talk was part of the Simons Foundation Autism Research lecture series.

About the Lecture

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition whose biological basis is yet to be elucidated. The Australian Autism Biobank (AAB) is an initiative of the Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism to establish an Australian resource of biospecimens, phenotypes and genomic data for autism research.

In this lecture, Jake Gratten and Naomi Wray reported on results from 2,477 individuals with DNA data from 546 families, including 886 participants ages 2 to 17 years with diagnosed (871 participants) or suspected (15 participants) ASD, 218 siblings without ASD, 1,256 parents, and 117 unrelated children without an ASD diagnosis. A subset of these AAB participants has fecal microbiome data (the largest data set to date internationally). Their analyses suggest that autism traits lead to restricted dietary intake, leading to reduced microbiome diversity, with no evidence for a reverse causal relationship.

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