Gene-environment interactions in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD)

Objectives: 1. To identify specific exposure patterns to environmental toxicants, potentially involved in ASD etiology, in a dataset of Portuguese children diagnosed with ASD aged 7-9 years; 2. To identify genetic variants interacting with environmental and epigenetic factors; 3. To build a global model that integrates genetic, environmental and epigenetic factors for risk assessment in ASD.João Xavier Santos is a fellow of the BioSys-PhD programme and a recipient of a scholarship funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) (PD/BD/114386/2016) – Autism Spectrum Disorders in the European Union (ASDEU) programme, funded by DG-SANCO (SANCO/2014/C2/035)N/