Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary geneticist at the Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, has proposed that schizophrenia and autism are the opposite ends of the same social spectrum. Speaking at the Sackler Colloquium on Evolution in Health and Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences, Crespi noted that copy number variations (CNVs) in the human genome are similar for both schizophrenia and autism. What are CNVs and what evidence is their to support Crespi’s hypothesis?

What are CNVs?

Copy number variations are spontaneous mutations in the genome that result in duplications or deletions of the genomic sequence. Duplications can produce extra More >