Decoding the Autism Puzzle Analysis Essay Example
The lecture I decided to watch is called “Decoding the Autism Puzzle” given by Doctor Charles Sawyers and Doctor Christopher Walsh. This lecture was sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This lecture was about an hour long. Doctor Charles Sawyers started off with a brief summary of why some people have autism. He stated that the occurrence of autism does not happen in the cells themselves, but in how the cells communicate with each other. Autism is one of the few disorders that does not show abnormalities when you have a patient participate in an MRI scan. Most people with autism have a brain that looks fairly normal and you cannot directly tell that they would have autism by just observing the brain.
Autism is a behavior disorder that most commonly gets diagnosed when observing a child doing daily activities. There are some actions that lead doctors into thinking a child might have autism. These actions can include; not making direct eye contact, being fearful of contact/interactions with humans, failing to learn a language at the typical age of 2, and repetitive movements. Autism gets diagnosed when watching a child, and the diagnosis can be imperfect. Some kids with autism can grow out of it as they grow and improve their social interactions. Autism is a spectrum of disorders meaning that kids can experience all sorts of levels of autism and how much it affects their life. One in eighty-eight kids are diagnosed with autism. Austims can be very mild like the form of autism “Aspergers” which is very the child can be very intelligent but socially awkward. Or to some more serious cases where children can have no social skills and very little learning skills. Autism is a blanket term for all of these cases.
Autism can occur in a child for a few different reasons; the mother could ingest some environmental toxins during pregnacy, brain damage happened to the fetus, the father’s age, etc. It has been rumored that vaccines could cause autism however that theory has been disproven. A test was done with a large group of kids (vaccinated and unvaccinated) to observe how many would end up with autism and more kids who were unvaccinated had signs of autism proving that theory to be wrong. In addition to the information, we just learned there has been a question for many years upon doctors, Do genes play a role in autism? To find the answer to this question scientists studied identical twins. They noticed that identical twins share 100% of their genes whereas non-identical twins share 50%. This means that if one identical twin has autism the other twin has a much higher risk of getting it than if non-identical twins had this same dilemma.
One idea that is often assumed when it comes to autism is that all genes are inherited. Normally what happens is that an error occurs in the copying of DNA. This can create a de novo mutation which means that it is shown in the child but not in the parent. These mutations are not inherited, but merely spontaneous. Consequently, genes can be inherited if a person with autism decides to have kids. That is a known risk but rarely 2 perfectly healthy people can have a kid with autism. But sadly it is a possiblilty.
Another thing scientists need to look at is point mutations. Point mutations are changes to the genetic sequence that can affect protein structure. You can observe all different types of point mutations such as the TAC in the DNA code can be mutated by changing the T to a C you can change the tyrosine not at the protein level but at the DNA level. Another mutation that can happen with the TAC in the DNA code is that if you change the middle A to a G you are making a Missense change which is a Ceistine. One last mutation you can cause with the TAC in the DNA code is that if the C changed to a G it creates a stop codon which would cut the protein altogether. If you create mutations the most common thing that could happen is will swap one amino acid to another. It is like a butterfly effect if you change one amino acid the other one will be affected too. De novo mutations often show similarities through siblings. Commonly by having a mutation but only one sibling is heavily affected to where they show signs to be diagnosed with autism. There are more many mutations and reasons that autism can happen in children that are less commonly known too and I think it is important to know. Therefore, if you want to learn more about this topic to search up more information over the other various types of mutations.
Overall, this lecture strengthens the readers’ learning and promotes the knowledge of autism and how it is truly a genetic mutation. The findings you learned from this lecture are important information to know to better grasp the concept of genetic mutations like we are learning in my class right now.
I really enjoyed this lecture. The speaker had a great tone when talking about such a difficult topic. I liked how much he paced it. I did not have a need to speed up the lecture, nor slow it down. I found the topic very interesting too. Normally I have trouble grasping different topics in biology but this one intrigued me and kept me listening throughout the entirety of the lecture. I always have been fascinated by different mental illnesses so things give me a background on how these mental illnesses come to be. One thing I would change about this lecture, in particular, is that it was too long. I felt like there was filler information that did not relate to the lecture’s topic as a whole. The lecture could have been easily cut to 40 minutes instead of an hour in total length. I like how this lecture related to what we have been studying in class. One example is this lecture talked about DNA and how easily it can be changed or passed along through generations and form mutations that eventually cause autism. I would recommend watching this lecture to people who are interested in learning more about the causes of autism and who have a long attention span. This lecture provides listeners with a satisfactory overview of autism as a whole and accurately describes the different types of autism and its severities.
