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Lipid transport and human brain development

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How the human brain rapidly builds up its lipid content during brain growth and maintains its lipids in adulthood has remained elusive. Two new studies show that inactivating mutations in MFSD2A, known to be expressed specifically at the blood-brain barrier, lead to microcephaly, thereby offering a simple and surprising solution to an old enigma.

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Figure 1: Lipid transport into the human brain.

Marina Corral Spence/Nature Publishing Group

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Immunology, and the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Christer Betsholtz is in the Vascular Biology Program, Genetics and Pathology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.,

    Christer Betsholtz

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  1. Christer Betsholtz
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Correspondence to Christer Betsholtz.

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Betsholtz, C. Lipid transport and human brain development. Nat Genet 47, 699–701 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3348

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