Department of Psychology, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Autism Res. 2021 Sep;14(9):1843-1853. doi: 10.1002/aur.2550. Epub 2021 Jun 5.
Previous studies found associations between autism-related phenotypes and both rearing and V1A arginine vasopressin receptor (AVPR1A) genotypes. We tested whether these exposures as well as their interaction were associated with autism-related phenotypes in 121 laboratory-housed chimpanzees. We used expert-derived weights to obtain autism scores from ratings on the 43-item Chimpanzee Personality Questionnaire; higher scores indicated more autistic-like traits. The first model included fixed effects for sex, age, and rearing, and a random effect that addressed the relatedness of subjects. The second model was the same except that it also included the rearing × AVPR1A genotype interaction as a fixed effect. Both models indicated that the phenotype was moderately heritable and that chimpanzees reared by their mothers had lower scores on the scale. The effect of genotype in both models indicated that chimpanzees with an indel deletion had higher scores on the scale, although the credible interval included zero. Moreover, the rearing × genotype interaction in the second model indicated that chimpanzees who possessed the non-deletion genotype and who were reared by their mother were at even greater risk. The credible interval for this effect did not include zero, but fit statistics indicated that the model without the interaction was marginally better, and the interaction was in the opposite direction than we expected based on previous work. These findings highlight the importance of rearing effects in the typical social development of our closet-living nonhuman relative. LAY SUMMARY: We tested whether, in chimpanzees, scores on a scale comprising traits that resembled aspects of autism were related to a gene associated with autism in prior research and/or early rearing. Human-reared chimpanzees had higher scores (indicating more autistic-like traits). Chimpanzees that possessed the gene also had higher scores, but we could not exclude the possibility that there was no effect of genotype. These findings suggest that we can measure autism-like characteristics in chimpanzees, and so study it in this species.
先前的研究发现自闭症相关表型与养育方式和 V1A 精氨酸加压素受体（AVPR1A）基因型有关。我们测试了这些暴露因素及其相互作用是否与 121 只实验室饲养的黑猩猩的自闭症相关表型有关。我们使用专家得出的权重，从 43 项黑猩猩个性问卷的评分中获得自闭症得分；得分越高表示越具有自闭症特征。第一个模型包括性别、年龄和养育方式的固定效应，以及一个解决受试者亲缘关系的随机效应。第二个模型与第一个模型相同，只是它还包括作为固定效应的养育方式与 AVPR1A 基因型的相互作用。两个模型都表明该表型具有中度遗传性，且由母亲抚养的黑猩猩在量表上的得分较低。两个模型中的基因型效应表明，具有插入缺失的黑猩猩在量表上的得分较高，尽管可信区间包括零。此外，第二个模型中的养育方式与基因型的相互作用表明，具有非缺失基因型且由母亲抚养的黑猩猩的风险更大。这个效应的可信区间不包括零，但拟合统计数据表明，没有相互作用的模型稍好一些，而且相互作用的方向与我们基于先前工作的预期相反。这些发现强调了养育方式对我们最亲近的非人类亲属的典型社会发展的重要性。
我们测试了在黑猩猩中，类似于自闭症某些方面的特征的评分是否与之前研究中与自闭症相关的基因有关，以及/或者与早期的养育方式有关。由人类抚养的黑猩猩的得分较高（表明具有更多的自闭症特征）。拥有该基因的黑猩猩的得分也较高，但我们不能排除基因型没有影响的可能性。这些发现表明，我们可以在黑猩猩身上测量出类似自闭症的特征，并在这个物种中研究自闭症。
