The Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) is a

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

biobank funded by

Autism Speaks Autism Speaks Inc. is an American non-profit autism awareness organization and the largest autism research organization in the United States. It sponsors autism research and conducts awareness and outreach activities aimed at families, governm ...

. It exists as a

repository and family registry of genotypic and phenotypic information available to autism researchers worldwide __TOC__

History

AGRE was established in the 1990s by a predecessor organization, Cure Autism Now. Cure Autism Now was a

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

-based

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

founded in 1995 by Jonathan Shestack and Portia Iversen, the parents of an autistic child, whose story is told in the book '' Strange Son''. Cure Autism Now was an organization of parents, doctors and scientists devoted to research to prevent, treat and cure autism. In 1997, Cure Autism Now established AGRE despite initial resistance from scientists to begin a project that conflicted with existing practices.

Projects

In October 2011, AGRE announced a plan to create the world's largest library of sequenced

human genome The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as the DNA within each of the 23 distinct chromosomes in the cell nucleus. A small DNA molecule is found within individual Mitochondrial DNA, mitochondria. These ar ...

s of individuals with autism-related genes, representing 2000 families and 10000 individuals. To do this, AGRE will provide specimens to the

Beijing Genomics Institute BGI Group, formerly Beijing Genomics Institute, is a Chinese genomics company with headquarters in Yantian, Shenzhen, Yantian, Shenzhen. The company was originally formed in 1999 as a genetics research center to participate in the Human Genome Pro ...

, who would perform the sequencing.

References

{{reflist Human genome projects Biobank organizations