Behavioral deficits observed in autism can be grouped into four clusters: physiological and neurological health; arousal, anxiety, and regulatory systems; social interaction and communication; and behavioral inflexibility and cognition. Ted Abel and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania are planning to characterize the phenotypes of three mouse lines engineered to model autism: mice lacking CNTNAP2 or SHANK3B and mice with a deletion of the 16p11.2 region. The researchers plan to create the strains on a C57BL6 genetic background. They also plan to analyze the 16p11.2 mice in a B6/129 F1 background, which will allow them to control for other genetic variants that might interact with genes in this region.