An Interstitial 17q11.2 de novo Deletion Involving the Gene in a High-Functioning Autistic Patient.

We describe a 32-year-old male patient diagnosed with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder carrying a de novo 196-kb interstitial deletion at chromosome 17q11.2. The deletion was detected by array CGH (180K Agilent) and confirmed by quantitative PCR on genomic DNA. The deleted region spans the entire and genes and partially the gene. The gene encodes for a regulatory subunit of the cyclin-dependent kinase 5 responsible for its brain-specific activation. This gene has been previously associated with intellectual disability in humans. A reduction in transcript was detected, consistent with the genomic deletion. Based on the functional role of , this gene appears as the best candidate to explain the clinical phenotype of our patient, whose neuropsychological profile has more resemblance with some of the higher brain function anomalies recently described in the CreER-p35 conditional knockout mouse model than previously described patients with intellectual disability.