Re-creating autism, in mice Mice with a particular gene mutation avoid interacting with other mice and show compulsive, repetitive behavior. Anne Trafton, MIT News Office today's news Understanding proteins Graphic: Christine Daniloff New model of protein folding helps researchers handle flood of genomic data Energy Conference spotlights military's green energy March 22, 2011 Dueling algorithms March 18, 2011 Guoping Feng, professor of brain and cognitive sciences and member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. Photo: Kent Dayton March 21, 2011 email comment print share By mutating a single gene, researchers at MIT and Duke have produced mice with two of the most common traits of autism — compulsive, repetitive behavior and avoidance of social interaction. They further showed that this gene, which is also implicated in many cases of human autism, appears to produce autistic behavior by interfering with communication between brain cells. The finding, r...