The finding was made by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine studying Drosophila fruit flies. The researchers said the discovery might lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, since human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

"This finding now gives us the opportunity to see what job neurexin performs within the cell, so that we can gain a better insight into what can go wrong in the nervous system when neurexin function is lost," said Dr. Manzoor Bhat, associate professor of cell and molecular physiology and senior author of the study.

The research, reported in the online edition of the journal Neuron, is the first to demonstrate in a Drosophila model the consequences that mutating the protein might have on synapses.