Author(s)

Gaolin Liu, Junlin Lu, Gracie Hanjia Zhang

Corresponding Author

Gaolin Liu

ABSTRACT

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder that has effects on social interactions, communication, and creates repetitive patterns of behaviour activities and interests. It is acknowledged that about seventy million people on Earth have Autism. Its importance is therefore very explicit. However, there is still a lot that we don’t know about this widely effective disease. Past studies and treatments have mainly focused on the physical features of autism. But it wasn’t until recent years that we started to focus on the genes causing this disease. And it turns out that genes are a very important factor in the pathogenesis of this disease, making the studying of genes affecting autism extremely significant. Autism is a strong gene-related neurological disorder with high genetic heterogeneity. SHANK3, a kind of Genetic Association-Syndromic-Genetic Association-Rare single gene variant, is strongly related to autism and its function, relation in autism and treatments related to it will be discussed.

KEYWORDS

Neuroscience, SHANK3, ASD, gene, pathology, treatments, psychiatric