旭硝子財団助成研究成果報告2018

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89Tewarit Sarachana90Boonserm 91Warasinee KeawkamnerdpongInvestigation of Bisphenol-A Effects associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder using Transcriptomic Profiling and Interactomic Analysis of Multipotent Neural Stem Cells(Project 2016)Speech-Recognizing Robot for Assisting in Autism Therapy(Project 2017)A Cloud-Based Framework for Big Data Modeling(Project 2017)66旭硝子財団　助成研究成果報告（2018）Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder inexplicably biased towards male. The exact cause of ASD remains unclear but recent studies have shown that exposure to bisphenol-A (BPA), an endocrine disrupting chemical widely used in polycarbonate plastic products, is associated with the susceptibility of ASD. However, the effects of BPA gestational exposure on developing brain and neural stem cells remain unclear. In this study, we therefore sought to determine the association of BPA exposure and ASD, and investigate the effect of BPA on multipotent neural stem cells and on transcriptome profiles of the brain using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis and interactomic analysis. Interestingly, a hypergeometric distribution analysis of differentially expressed genes in response to BPA previously published in NCBI GEO DataSets database and ASD candidate genes revealed a significant association of BPA-responsive genes and ASD. Neurosphere assays revealed that neurospheres of neural stem cells isolated from neonatal rats prenatally exposed to BPA was significantly larger compared to control. Prenatal exposure to BPA caused down-regulation of several genes in males but not in females, including the autism susceptibility candidate gene 2 (Auts2) and the Forkhead box protein P2 (Foxp2), both of which have been reported as autism candidate genes. The interactomic analysis of differentially expressed genes revealed a significant association with ASD-related neurological functions. Our findings indicate that prenatal BPA exposure deregulates brain expression profiles of genes associated with ASD, especially in males, and warrants further study. A better understanding of BPA effects may shed light on the mechanisms underlying the cause and the sex-bias of ASD.To live in a healthy ageing society, it is not only that we need to maintain the quality of life of elderly but also need to strengthen the development of our children. Unfortunately, many children are affected by autism spectrum disorders. In the past, our research team has designed and developed a mobile robot to support specialists in autistic child development program for social interaction. The results showed that the robot could well assist in autism therapy. In this study, we aim to incorporate speech recognition feature to extend the robot ability to support social communication as well. We built the feature and used it in storytelling robot experiment. The recognition model created from noisy training MFCC-based system with noise suppresion can perform well in some noise settings. However, we cannot investigate the performance because all participants did not speak during experiment. We will further our investigation in the future.ChaisangmongkonThailand’s digital economy is experiencing a growing pain as the rise of Big Data demands better technology to understand, analyze, and extract business insights from data, but the industry lacks a workforce with sufficient technical skills to fuel this growth. This research aims to develop an artificial intelligence system