O'Ryan Lab

Our research activities are focused on understanding the epigenetics of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in South African populations, and the molecular mechanisms of the genes associated with this population. Although much progress has been made the past decade on identifying genes associated with ASD, the majority of this research has been done on northern hemisphere populations. African populations are under-represented in ASD molecular research, in spite of the fact that it is well known that African populations have greater genetic diversity than European and American populations.