DIXDC1 and autism: Within the developing neocortex, Dixdc1 has been shown to play a role in neuronal proliferation and migration (Singh et al., 2010), and dendritic development and synapse function (Guo et al., 2018; Martin et al., 2018), and multiple sequence-disrupting single nucleotide variants in DIXDC1 have been associated with mental illness and autism (Martin et al., 2018).