Can we accelerate autism discoveries through crowdsourcing?

- The complex entanglement of genetic and environmental factors contributing to autism has stymied medical advancement.
- Parsing autism's complexity requires integration of phenotype, genotype, and environment at scales impossible to reach via traditional efforts.
- Use of ubiquitous digital tools and social media to source the global crowd will amass the data needed to speed discovery.
- Crowdsourcing will provide data crucial to understanding how the interaction of genes and environment contribute to autism.

Autism is a dramatically expanding public health challenge. The search for genomic variants underlying the disease concomitantly accelerated over the last 5 years, leading to a general consensus that genetics can explain between 40% and 60% of the symptomatic variability seen in autism. This stresses both an urgent need to continue devoting resources to the search for genetic etiologies that define the forms of autism, and an equal need for attention to the interactive roles of the environment. While some environmental factors have been investigated, few studies have attempted to elucidate the combination and interplay between gene and environment to gain clear understanding of the mechanisms by which environmental factors interact with genetic susceptibilities in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Due to financial constraints as well as recruitment protocols limited by geography, such studies have been challenging to implement. We discuss here how crowdsourcing approaches can overcome these limitations.