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LONDON — Queen Camilla has aligned herself firmly with the Princess of Wales rather than with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle following the couple’s return to Britain this week, according to a royal biographer whose account was reported by the Daily Mail and picked up by outlets across the royal-watching press.

Royal author Andrew Lownie said Camilla, who is described as being close to Catherine, Princess of Wales, has been pushing King Charles III to set firmer limits on his dealings with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “The Queen, who is very close to Kate, has been stiffening the resolve of the King to establish clear boundaries for [Harry and Meghan],” Lownie said, according to the Daily Mail’s reporting. He added that there “remains a great deal of family dissension” over how Charles has handled what he called “the Sussex problem,” pointing also to lingering unhappiness within the family over the King’s handling of the fallout involving Prince Andrew.

Lownie’s comments came just days after Charles and Camilla hosted Harry and Meghan for tea at the King’s Gloucestershire residence, a meeting that had been read by some as a sign of warming relations within the family. But Lownie cautioned that any goodwill on display should not be mistaken for genuine reconciliation, saying Harry should not read the Queen’s composed public demeanor as forgiveness. He said Camilla has grown notably closer to Catherine in the years since Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties in 2020, a period commonly referred to as “Megxit,” while remaining guarded toward the King’s younger son and his wife.

Harry and Meghan landed in Birmingham on Wednesday, arriving with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, for what has been widely described as an extended stay in the United Kingdom. British media outlets have reported that the couple’s children have been enrolled at a private school in the country, one of the clearer signals yet that the family’s relocation from their home base in Montecito, California, may not be temporary.

The claims about Camilla’s alignment with Catherine are the latest in a string of similar reports from British and American royal commentators in recent months. Separate reporting from the celebrity magazine Globe, citing unnamed palace insiders, has similarly described tension between Camilla and Catherine over how to handle Harry, alleging that Camilla has expressed frustration that the Princess of Wales has quietly encouraged a path toward reconciliation between Charles and his younger son. Other tabloid reporting, including from the National Examiner, has made similar claims about strain between the two women, though such accounts, sourced to anonymous palace insiders, have not been independently verified and Buckingham Palace does not typically comment on this kind of reporting.

The broader narrative of tension between the royal women has also been shaped by claims in recently published books examining the family’s internal dynamics. Journalist and author Tom Bower, in his book “Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family,” has alleged that Camilla once told a friend that Meghan had “brainwashed” Harry, according to extracts published by The Times. That same book reportedly claims Prince William and Catherine came to view Meghan as “a threat” to the family in the period before the Sussexes’ departure from official duties.

Buckingham Palace has not issued a public response to Lownie’s specific claims regarding Camilla’s current stance, and neither the palace nor representatives for Harry and Meghan responded to requests for comment reported alongside the story. Royal commentators have noted that members of the family, including Charles, Camilla, William and Catherine, rarely confirm or deny this type of reporting directly, a longstanding practice within the institution meant to avoid escalating public disputes involving family members.

Harry and Meghan’s relationship with the wider royal family has remained strained since they stepped back from official royal duties in early 2020, a rift that widened further following the couple’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and Harry’s 2023 memoir, “Spare,” both of which included pointed criticism of members of the family. Harry has continued to pursue a legal battle in the United Kingdom over the removal of his taxpayer-funded police protection following his departure from royal duties, a separate dispute that has run alongside the family’s more personal tensions.

Despite the reported friction, this week’s tea meeting between Charles, Camilla, Harry and Meghan has been characterized by some royal watchers as evidence that at least a partial thaw may be underway between Harry and his father, even if broader reconciliation with the rest of the family remains uncertain. Commentators including Lownie have cautioned, however, that any warmth shown during the visit should be read cautiously rather than as a sign that the family’s underlying divisions have been resolved.

SAN FRANCISCO — Researchers have published what they describe as the largest molecular map of autism-related protein interactions, showing how many different genetic mutations can disrupt the same networks in the developing brain.

The study, released Thursday in the journal Science, charts more than 1,800 protein-protein interactions linked to 100 high-confidence autism risk genes. About 87 percent of those interactions had not been reported before. The authors say the work shifts attention from long lists of genes toward the protein complexes those genes encode — a level at which future drugs might act.

“You need this insight to ultimately develop drugs, and we’ve generated a map now that is providing essentially the molecular underpinnings of autism and pointing us in a multitude of different directions for ultimate drug discovery,” said Dr. Nevan Krogan, a University of California, San Francisco professor, director of the Quantitative Biosciences Institute and senior investigator at the Gladstone Institutes.

“The hope would be at some point you’d be looking back and saying, ‘Ah, this map led to X, Y, and Z, and therefore we have now the first-ever treatment to autism. That’s the vision, and I believe that’s going to come to fruition at some point in the future,” Krogan said.

More than 250 genes have been associated with autism spectrum disorder. That diversity has made it hard to imagine a single therapy. Proteins, however, often work in shared complexes. If many mutations damage the same partnerships, a smaller set of targets could matter for larger groups of patients.

“When you have the genes and the mutations, that’s just a list. That’s a parts list,” Krogan said. “What you need to do is have a wiring diagram of that parts list, and that’s where you need to go to the proteins and understand how the proteins talk to one another, and understand when you put a mutation in a protein, what does it do to the protein-protein interactions? So, understanding that will point you down therapeutic roads that you just could not have ever imagined if you were simply just looking at the genes and the mutation.”

The team used affinity purification–mass spectrometry to map interactions for the 100 genes, including versions carrying patient-derived missense mutations. They then used AlphaFold structural predictions to flag which contacts were likely direct and which mutations were most worth testing. Priority cases were examined in human forebrain organoids and in Xenopus embryos.

“AI is allowing us to study proteins that we could never have even dreamed of even a couple of years ago, and it’s providing an unprecedented light being shone on autism, the underlying biology behind autism,” Krogan said. He called the result “the largest that has ever been done on autism,” and “the largest map of its kind for any neuropsychiatric disorder,” as well as “the largest mutant map that’s ever been generated for any area of disease.”

One example in the paper involves FOXP1. Distinct mutations weakened its physical partnership with FOXP4. In organoids, that change altered how deep-layer cortical neurons developed. Other mapped proteins clustered around neurogenesis, tubulin biology, transcriptional control and chromatin modification.

Krogan said his group already has three programs underway to explore therapies based on the map.

Independent scientists not involved in the work described it as an important systems-level resource, while stressing that drugs are still far off.

“The new study is really exciting in that it represents the most systematic protein-level view of autism risk we’ve had to date,” Fikri Birey, an assistant professor of human genetics at Emory University School of Medicine, wrote in an email. “In the future, it may be possible to identify drugs that stabilize disrupted protein complexes or block pathological interactions, rather than trying to correct every individual autism-causing mutation.”

Alison Singer, president of the Autism Science Foundation, called the paper a turning point for families of people with profound autism. “Today’s study shows where different autism genes converge on shared biological pathways, and those shared pathways could ultimately give us therapeutic targets relevant to much larger groups of autistic people, including people without an identified genetic cause. That is nothing short of a huge watershed moment for autism science.”

She added: “For families of people with profound autism like mine, this is the kind of scientific advance we have been waiting for and praying for. Many people with profound autism have rare genetic variants and the promise of precision medicine has always been that understanding those variants would eventually allow us to move beyond treating symptoms and behaviors, and begin addressing the underlying biology.”

Singer also cautioned that discoveries still must become drug candidates and pass safety and efficacy tests.

Dr. Andy Shih, chief science officer at Autism Speaks, struck a similar note. “Translating these kinds of discoveries into therapies is a long process,” he wrote. “This study provides valuable insights into potential targets, but much more research is needed before these findings can lead to clinical applications.”

The authors themselves limit how far the map should be read. Krogan said it is most directly relevant to people with profound autism — those who often need around-the-clock care and who account for about 30 percent of people on the spectrum. He argued the same protein-network approach could still inform work on schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, tic disorders and even cancer.

The Science paper, titled “A foundational autism protein interaction atlas reveals molecular convergence,” lists Belinda Wang, Rasika Vartak and Kelsey Hennick among co-first authors, with Kirsten Obernier, Tomasz J. Nowakowski and A. Jeremy Willsey among co-corresponding authors.

The publication arrives as federal autism research priorities are again under debate. The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee has a draft strategic plan before it. Singer said she worries a broad “injury” framing could pull money away from genetics and brain biology. Shih said he expects the plan to keep room for large-scale work on how genetic factors shape development.

For now, the practical yield is a wiring diagram, not a pill. Hundreds of risk genes remain. Most of the newly listed interactions have not been tested as drug targets. Organoids and frog embryos are models, not patients. What the map does offer is a way to stop treating every mutation as a separate lock. If enough of those locks share the same bolts, the search for a key becomes smaller — and, researchers say, more realistic than it was when the field had only a parts list.

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Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8