A lot of abstracts come out each day in autism research. Some are controversial. A few make big advances. Many make small advances. One can never tell what one will learn by following the flow of abstracts.
For example. Did you know there is a “Sonic Hedgehog” protein? (Sonic the Hedgehog being a character from video games). A researcher in Saudi Arabia proposes that it might be involved in autism etiology:
This probably isn’t one of the “big advances” papers. But, something new, at least to me.
Left Brain Right Brain 
A post on FTB looks at a far more promising claim to do with missing gene clusters.
Link Here.
A very readable book for the non-biologist is Sean Carrol’s “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” in which he shows how a few genes regulate the timing of development. Hedgehog genes are key to understanding evolution and development (evo-devo).
Sonic Hedgehog genes… named by those wacky Drosophila geneticists. Apparently, a mutation in this developmental regulator makes fruit flies spiny.
Researchers studying different model organisms form their own little communities, and the Drosophila community has a custom of using humorous names. For example, a gene whose variants affect susceptibility to alcohol was named “CheapDate.”
C. elegans (nematode) geneticists, on the other hand, tend to go for the literal. A gene with a mutation that makes worms short and fat is “dumpy” (dpy), a gene that affects spermatogenesis is “spe.” Maybe we’re all autistic?