The Boy Missing An Entire Type Of Brain Cell
Even before he was born, it was clear that the boy’s brain was unusual—so much so that his expecting parents flew from rural Alaska to Seattle, where specialists could attend to their son from birth. The answer was ultimately stranger than doctors could have imagined: The boy’s brain was missing an entire type of cell, called microglia, the result of mutations in a single gene, called CSF1R. Microglia make up 10 percent of the brain’s cells, but they are not neurons and therefore have long been overlooked.
Source: www.theatlantic.com