Congratulations to Anita Leembruggen on her first published research article in Autism Research

Physiology PhD student *Anita Leembruggen (Department of Physiology) and *Dr Gayathri Balasuriya (RMIT) are co first authors on their first publication "Colonic dilation and altered ex vivo gastrointestinal motility in the neuroligin-3 knockout mouse". (Autism Research, April, 2019)

LAY SUMMARY: People with autism commonly experience gut problems. Many gene mutations associated with autism affect neuronal activity. We studied mice in which the autism-associated Neuroligin-3 gene is deleted to determine whether this impacts gut neuronal numbers or motility. We found that although mutant mice had similar gut structure and numbers of neurons in all gut regions examined, they had distended colons and faster colonic muscle contractions. Further work is needed to understand how Neuroligin-3 affects neuron connectivity in the gastrointestinal tract.

Link to article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/aur.2109 (open access)