As SNPs perturbing miRNA-mRNA regulation can induce aberrant expression of autism-related genes, Vaishnavi and colleagues developed a systematic computational pipeline that integrates data from established databases. Using stringent selection criteria, they were able to identify 9 SNPs modulating and 12 creating new miRNA-mRNA regulation in the 3′UTR of autism-associated genes.70 This paper provides valuable candidate SNPs affecting autism pathogenesis but unfortunately, as for other studies, further functional experiments are needed to validate the predicted data.
