A common lab fish is helping autism research take a more targeted turn The fish are only a few days old, barely beyond the larval stage, and yet their movements can hint at something much larger. A flash of light. A change in sleep. A muted startle response. In tiny zebrafish, those basic behaviors can become a map, one that may point researchers toward drug candidates for specific forms of autism. That is the idea behind a new Yale study that used zebrafish to sort through hundreds of already approved drugs and match them to genetic forms of autism spectrum disorder. Instead of treating autism as one condition with one likely treatment path, the researchers argue for a more precise strategy, one that groups autism-linked genes by shared biological and behavioral patterns. “Because autism spectrum disorder is highly clinically and genetically heterogeneous, it is challenging to identify drug candidates and many new drugs under investigation are not effective in clinical trials,” said Ellen J. Hoffman, an associate professor at the Yale Child Study Center at …