i just want to clarify a point though.

“Many of the genes linked to [these] repeats [were] never thought to be involved in autism before.”

that's because it's not individual genes that are involved with autism, but the errors in translation, themselves. so, it's not the specific genes in these errors in translation that are important, but the errors in translation themselves.

granted, there are going to be a lot of places in the genome where these kinds of sequencing errors aren't important. but, what the research on autism says is that you will get symptoms of autism by introducing these errors in all kinds of different places in the genome, and that the symptoms will arise as a consequence of these errors jumping up all over the place.

i'm sure that the quote is unfortunate, and reflects more on the poor understanding of the journalist than the poor understanding of the scientist. what's important to me is that the conceptual error is corrected.

autism is not caused by any specific genes, or any specific number of genes, but by random errors in translation across the entire genome. for that reason, every expression of autism is genetically distinct - it's not the genes themselves that are causing the problem, it's the reproduction of those genes that is causing the problem.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/breakthrough-in-autism-spectrum-research-finds-genetic-wrinkles-in-dna-could-be-a-cause-1.5041584