Exonic Mosaic Mutations Contribute Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

AbstractGenetic risk factors for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have yet to be fully elucidated. Postzygotic mosaic mutations (PMMs) have been implicated in several neurodevelopmental disorders and overgrowth syndromes. We systematically evaluated PMMs by leveraging whole-exome sequencing data on a large family-based ASD cohort, the Simons Simplex Collection. We found evidence that 11% of published single nucleotide variant (SNV)de novomutations are potentially PMMs. We then developed a robust SNV PMM calling approach that leverages complementary callers, logistic regression modeling, and additional heuristics. Using this approach, we recalled SNVs and found that 22% ofde novomutations like…