PI, Institution:
Rebecca Jean Schmidt, University of California at Davis

Grant: R24ES028533

Description:
Markers of Autism Risk in Babies: Learning Early Signs (MARBLES) is a longitudinal cohort investigating prenatal biological and environmental risk factors for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the younger siblings of children with ASD in California. For more information about this cohort, visit the NIEHS Epidemiology Resources webpage for MARBLES.

Cohort Maintenance & Enrichment Activities:
Continuing to enroll and follow up with participants, including assessing exposure and neurodevelopment. Validating and reliability testing environmental exposure questions and measures for use in future studies.

Data Management & Sharing Activities:
Further developing and maintaining infrastructure for data and sample repositories. Preparing data for data sharing and analysis by implementing updated data entry, cleaning, and sharing protocols and creating new data extraction programs, data codebooks, and variables that will harmonize with similar studies. Improving sample biorepository infrastructure and facilitating sample sharing.

Data Access:
MARBLES specimens are included in the UC Davis Virtual Biospecimen Discovery (VBD) tool, an online secure portal linked to a harmonized platform for investigators to reach the broader research community. The portal contains information about specimens in repositories that are potentially available for use.

Data can be found through the following repositories:

  • ECHO: To be released
  • Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO): GSE123302, GSE67615
  • Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Data Center: #2016-1449 and #2016-1438
  • National Database for Autism Research (NDAR): C2557

Data and samples are also available upon request by contacting our team and completing a request form. For more information, contact Daniel Young and Elizabeth Guerrero.

Please see NIH RePORTER for publications associated with this R24 grant.