Welcome to the Lab of Lauren A. Weiss, PhD

UCSF Department of Psychiatry, Institute for Human Genetics, Weill Institute for Neurosciences

Genetics of Autism Research Program

Our long term goals are to use genetic tools to improve understanding, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of autism and related traits. The immediate goals of our research are two-fold.  First, we are working to identify autism susceptibility genes by conducting studies designed to investigate quantitative trait loci, parental genetic risk factors, and genetic interaction effects such as: gene x gene, gene x environment and gene x sex.  Second, now that we are beginning to identify robust associations between DNA variants and autism, we are creating models to understand how they influence neurodevelopment. The Weiss lab is generating stem cells from the genetic material of research subjects and studying neuronal growth, morphology, and function in cell culture.