MECP2 and autism: Of the 84 DEGs, 17 DEGs, including MECP2 (methyl-CpG-binding protein 2), which has been implicated in schizophrenia and autism as well as Rett syndrome (27, 28), differed in the opposite direction of the change in the methylation sites in the promoter regions (Table 1; Supplementary Figure 1), and 32 DEGs showed the same direction of change for the mRNA expression level and the DNA methylation level in the corresponding gene body (Table 2).