SHANK3 and autism: Initiatives such as the Synaptopathies Consortium, led by Dr. Deepak Srivastava at King’s College London, investigate synaptic biology with a specific focus on glutamatergic synapses, and have shown that stem-cells derived from autistic individuals with SHANK3 mutations can be linked to early neuronal morphogenesis, suggesting that synaptic development plays a vital role in the pathogenesis of autism (Kathuria et al., 2018).