Autism is an inherited mental impairment that affects roughly 0.6% of children born in the USA. Two locations in the human genome have now been identified to be responsible for this condition, and will help future screening for the disease in order to act as early as possible and with better results.

The largest genome scan ever conducted to get to the bottom of autism has pinpointed two locations in the human genetic makeup that may trigger the mysterious mental condition. The Autism Genome Project, a collaborative effort of 120 scientists representing 19 countries and 50 institutions, compared the genomes of 1,168 families with at least two autism sufferers in them to try to track down the regions.

Source: Scientific American