full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Wendy Chung: Autism — what we know (and what we don't know yet)

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So the question becomes, how can we sartt to identify what exactly those genes are. And let me pose something that might not be intuitive. In certain individuals, they can have autism for a resoan that is genetic but yet not because of autism running in the family. And the reason is because in certain ivdunidails, they can actually have genetic changes or mutations that are not passed down from the mother or from the fheatr, but actually start brand new in them, mutations that are prnseet in the egg or the sperm at the time of ceconotpin but have not been passed down gnreiteoan through generation within the family. And we can actually use that strategy to now understand and to identify those genes causing astuim in those individuals. So in fact, at the Simons Foundation, we took 2,600 individuals that had no family history of autism, and we took that child and their mohetr and father and used them to try and usdaertnnd what were those genes csaniug autism in those cases? To do that, we actually had to comprehensively be able to look at all that genetic information and determine what those differences were between the mother, the father and the child. In doing so, I apologize, I'm going to use an outdated analogy of edoleiycnpacs rather than Wikipedia, but I'm going to do so to try and help make the point that as we did this inventory, we needed to be able to look at massive amounts of information. Our genetic information is organized into a set of 46 volumes, and when we did that, we had to be able to account for each of those 46 volumes, because in some cases with autism, there's actually a single vumole that's missing. We had to get more granular than that, though, and so we had to start opennig those books, and in some cases, the genetic change was more subtle. It might have been a single paragraph that was missing, or yet, even more sltbue than that, a single ltteer, one out of three billion letters that was changed, that was altered, yet had profound effects in terms of how the brain functions and affects behavior. In doing this within these families, we were able to aonccut for approximately 25 percent of the individuals and determine that there was a single pufrwoel genetic factor that caused autism within those families. On the other hand, there's 75 percent that we still haven't figured out.

Open Cloze

So the question becomes, how can we _____ to identify what exactly those genes are. And let me pose something that might not be intuitive. In certain individuals, they can have autism for a ______ that is genetic but yet not because of autism running in the family. And the reason is because in certain ___________, they can actually have genetic changes or mutations that are not passed down from the mother or from the ______, but actually start brand new in them, mutations that are _______ in the egg or the sperm at the time of __________ but have not been passed down __________ through generation within the family. And we can actually use that strategy to now understand and to identify those genes causing ______ in those individuals. So in fact, at the Simons Foundation, we took 2,600 individuals that had no family history of autism, and we took that child and their ______ and father and used them to try and __________ what were those genes _______ autism in those cases? To do that, we actually had to comprehensively be able to look at all that genetic information and determine what those differences were between the mother, the father and the child. In doing so, I apologize, I'm going to use an outdated analogy of _____________ rather than Wikipedia, but I'm going to do so to try and help make the point that as we did this inventory, we needed to be able to look at massive amounts of information. Our genetic information is organized into a set of 46 volumes, and when we did that, we had to be able to account for each of those 46 volumes, because in some cases with autism, there's actually a single ______ that's missing. We had to get more granular than that, though, and so we had to start _______ those books, and in some cases, the genetic change was more subtle. It might have been a single paragraph that was missing, or yet, even more ______ than that, a single ______, one out of three billion letters that was changed, that was altered, yet had profound effects in terms of how the brain functions and affects behavior. In doing this within these families, we were able to _______ for approximately 25 percent of the individuals and determine that there was a single ________ genetic factor that caused autism within those families. On the other hand, there's 75 percent that we still haven't figured out.

Solution

  1. powerful
  2. father
  3. account
  4. volume
  5. opening
  6. mother
  7. individuals
  8. reason
  9. autism
  10. letter
  11. subtle
  12. causing
  13. understand
  14. conception
  15. start
  16. generation
  17. present
  18. encyclopedias

Original Text

So the question becomes, how can we start to identify what exactly those genes are. And let me pose something that might not be intuitive. In certain individuals, they can have autism for a reason that is genetic but yet not because of autism running in the family. And the reason is because in certain individuals, they can actually have genetic changes or mutations that are not passed down from the mother or from the father, but actually start brand new in them, mutations that are present in the egg or the sperm at the time of conception but have not been passed down generation through generation within the family. And we can actually use that strategy to now understand and to identify those genes causing autism in those individuals. So in fact, at the Simons Foundation, we took 2,600 individuals that had no family history of autism, and we took that child and their mother and father and used them to try and understand what were those genes causing autism in those cases? To do that, we actually had to comprehensively be able to look at all that genetic information and determine what those differences were between the mother, the father and the child. In doing so, I apologize, I'm going to use an outdated analogy of encyclopedias rather than Wikipedia, but I'm going to do so to try and help make the point that as we did this inventory, we needed to be able to look at massive amounts of information. Our genetic information is organized into a set of 46 volumes, and when we did that, we had to be able to account for each of those 46 volumes, because in some cases with autism, there's actually a single volume that's missing. We had to get more granular than that, though, and so we had to start opening those books, and in some cases, the genetic change was more subtle. It might have been a single paragraph that was missing, or yet, even more subtle than that, a single letter, one out of three billion letters that was changed, that was altered, yet had profound effects in terms of how the brain functions and affects behavior. In doing this within these families, we were able to account for approximately 25 percent of the individuals and determine that there was a single powerful genetic factor that caused autism within those families. On the other hand, there's 75 percent that we still haven't figured out.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
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concordance rate 3
genetic information 3
autism spectrum 2
spectrum disorder 2
fraternal twins 2
genes causing 2
causing autism 2
brain functions 2
good eye 2
develop autism 2
google glass 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
autism spectrum disorder 2
genes causing autism 2
good eye contact 2

Important Words

  1. account
  2. affects
  3. altered
  4. amounts
  5. analogy
  6. apologize
  7. approximately
  8. autism
  9. behavior
  10. billion
  11. books
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  19. child
  20. comprehensively
  21. conception
  22. determine
  23. differences
  24. effects
  25. egg
  26. encyclopedias
  27. fact
  28. factor
  29. families
  30. family
  31. father
  32. figured
  33. foundation
  34. functions
  35. generation
  36. genes
  37. genetic
  38. granular
  39. hand
  40. history
  41. identify
  42. individuals
  43. information
  44. intuitive
  45. inventory
  46. letter
  47. letters
  48. massive
  49. missing
  50. mother
  51. mutations
  52. needed
  53. opening
  54. organized
  55. outdated
  56. paragraph
  57. passed
  58. percent
  59. point
  60. pose
  61. powerful
  62. present
  63. profound
  64. question
  65. reason
  66. running
  67. set
  68. simons
  69. single
  70. sperm
  71. start
  72. strategy
  73. subtle
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  75. time
  76. understand
  77. volume
  78. volumes
  79. wikipedia