{
  "id": 17115865,
  "title": "Brain Quality Control Selectively Eliminates Neurons with Abnormal Variants in Development",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/29/brain-quality-control-selectively-eliminates-neurons-with-abnormal",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-10-29T19:17:19.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "GEN Biotechnology",
    "slug": "gen-biotechnology",
    "url": "https://www.genengnews.com/topics/translational-medicine/brain-quality-control-selectively-eliminates-neurons-with-abnormal-variants-in-development/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Scientists from Harvard Medical School and Boston Children Hospital have discovered a crucial quality control mechanism in the developing human brain. During fetal development, the brain produces a surplus of neurons, most of which are eliminated before birth. The study, published in Nature, reports that neurons with multiple copy number variants (CNVs) are eliminated around the time of birth due to the disruption of their ability to form synapses. These CNVs, which include DNA duplications or deletions, can impact brain function and may contribute to neuropsychiatric conditions such as autism, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and intellectual disability. The researchers used single-cell whole genome sequencing to analyze the genomes of over 1,500 neurons from 16 individuals, and validated their findings with deeper sequencing of over 800 neurons from 12 individuals. They found that nearly 26% of prenatal cortical neurons had widespread CNVs, which rapidly decreased to 6.2% after birth. The abnormal neurons were found to have abnormal expression of genes involved in synapse formation, suggesting that they fail to make critical connections during fetal development and are eliminated through a competition for synapses. Understanding this pruning process could improve treatments for disorders in which neural development goes awry, such as autism.",
  "summary": "In developing fetuses, the human brain generates an excess of neurons, most of which are eliminated around when the baby is born. New research suggests that this is an important quality-control mechanism. The post Brain Quality Control Selectively Eliminates Neurons with Abnormal Variants in Development appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News .",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}