The Independent Collegian

Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Chris Ankney Fred Williams looks through a tank of his zebra fish. His research on the fish could help in the understanding of autism as it relates to the consumption of and exposure to mercury.

An old painting from one of UT Associate Professor of Pharmacology Fred Williams' kids hangs proudly on his office door. It's a reminder of why he's researching zebra fish.

Williams' kids have autism.

"Autism is a developmental disorder," he said.

What Williams is trying to do is determine through his collection of fish if autism has a link to processing metal.

"Children with autism have a harder time processing the mercury [or other metals we're exposed to]," Williams said.

The processing of metals hasn't been officially nailed down as the cause of autism, he said, "but, it definitely has an effect on why their symptoms are showing it."

"You have to have these enzymes [that break down metals] in working order [to function]; if the metals mess that up, then we have a problem," Williams said.

The zebra fish have behavioral patterns that can be monitored to show the effect of the exposure to metals during their development, he said.

Fish have normal behaviors, like schooling, he added.

Fish that don't school have behaviors similar to autistic humans, Williams said.

This is an area of study that Williams was looking at before he began his research on autism - the link between development and behavior.

Williams started by studying the memory of the fish, teaching them where to go for food, he said.

"I just wanted to make them a little hungry and then give them a reward when they did something right," he said.

In his studies, Williams found that alcohol and lead made it hard for the fish to learn.

What Williams does now is expose the fish to different concentrations of thimerosal, a primary suspect of mercury exposure that's used to preserve pharmaceutical items, he said.

Although once used as a preservative in ear drops, thimersosal is very neurotoxic, Williams said.

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