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Gazing out over the Harvard Medical School quad, Dennis Wall, PhD, isn’t thinking about his research into the genetic causes of autism or the development of his ground-breaking Autworks Web site. He’s more concerned with the whereabouts of campus security. “They frown on skateboarding here,” he says, grinning sheepishly and displaying his new board. “I’ve been kicked out a few times.”
It’s easy to see how security might not recognize one of their best and brightest—a researcher with the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP), a member of the Faculty of 1,000 Web site (which provides rankings and commentary on current scientific research papers) and Harvard’s editor-in-chief of Evolutionary Bioinformatics. The spikey hair, four-color canvas shoes and neon green tie (the same “danger green” as his board and helmet) don’t exactly fit the lab coated stereotype of the research-scientist. Wall’s skateboard, a birthday gift from his wife, is a fitting accessory for a man in constant motion, both physically and mentally. When he’s not skating (which he tries to do every day, sometimes with his 3-year-old daughter riding her scooter), surfing (he attends a conference in Hawaii every January and surfs during lunch breaks) or riding elephants in Thailand, Wall spends his days with a team of eight researchers and one well-used espresso machine. Their quest? To decipher the genetic code of autism. “It’s particularly complex at the genetic level,” Wall says of the condition. “The genetics are so evasive that we still know very little about what’s responsible.”
“There’s so much information,” Wall says. “It’s impossible for any single researcher to grasp.” Making sense of massive amounts of data gathered from various Web resources like the Autism Genetic Research Exchange is what Wall’s team of researchers does. “We know of over 400 genes that are connected to autism,” he says. “Imagine how many different combinations of those genes might be at the root of the problem. Getting started is like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.”
Wall’s work is dense to the point of impenetrability, so his team digs for the roots of autism from multiple directions: informatics, genetics, behavioral and psychological. Casting their net wide, they focus on neurological diseases displaying characteristics in common with autism, such as epilepsy and seizure disorders. “We can start to identify the genes that have something in common with autism, and also the genetics that are indicative of autism alone,” he says.
Although cataloguing genes is time consuming, leaving little room in Wall’s life for surfing and skateboarding, his family remains a priority. “I work in the morning before the kids get up,” he says. “I get right back to it after they go to bed. My BlackBerry lets me work without actually being at work. I can work on bioinformatics out by the swing set.” Since family is such an important part of Wall’s life, it’s not surprising that it’s played a key role in his decision to study autism. “My sister-in-law has a severe, classic case of autism,” he says. “I’ve known her since she was a girl, so I’ve always been curious about the root of this behavior and why there are no solutions.”
One way Wall hopes to find those solutions is through his team’s Autworks Web site. Like an online roadmap, Autworks allows researchers across the world to see the most recent connections between the 40 diseases most closely related to autism. “It allows them to look at the networks that exist around particular genes,” he says. “We hope it provides inspiration in the work being done by our colleagues.” Wall sees the site as a way to encourage other researchers to share their findings for the benefit of the millions of people suffering from autism and the diseases connected with it. “If our colleagues working on other diseases know of connections we haven’t mapped out, they can go onto our site and add them,” says Wall. “If they disagree with a connection we’ve mapped, they can present their case for having it removed.” In a field where research is closely guarded, it’s an unconventional approach from an unconventional researcher. “We want to encourage our colleagues to recast our findings in the light of their own understanding,” he says. “We hope it becomes a tool that provides those ‘ah-ha’ moments for someone else.”
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