MSSNG is a groundbreaking collaboration between Autism Speaks, Google and the research community to create the
world’s largest genomic database on autism. MSSNG’s goal is to provide the best resources to enable the
identification of many subtypes of autism, which may lead to better diagnostics, as well as personalized and more
accurate treatments.
The first phase of MSSNG is to complete and make data available from the whole genome sequencing of blood DNA
(minimum 30x high-quality coverage) of 10,000 individuals from families from the Autism Genetic Research Exchange
(AGRE) repository, or from other well-phenotyped cohorts entering into this study. The MSSNG database, built using
the Google Cloud Platform and Google Genomics, intends to make its data as useful and widely accessible to
researchers as possible, including supporting access to local compute and storage resources, and providing genomic
exploration tools for standard and custom analyses. Whole genome sequences and their annotations and phenotype data
will be continually added to MSSNG with different levels and portals of access to researchers. Key leaders of MSSNG
are David Glazer (Verily), Thomas Frazier (Autism Speaks) and Stephen Scherer (SickKids Hospital and University of
Toronto). MSSNG’s philosophy is to promote and enable ‘open science’ research to lead to a better understanding of
autism. We welcome you to join
us. Click here to apply for access to the data.
Please contact the Coordinating Center
at asgenetics@autismspeaks.org with any questions.
