If you believe the common adage that you are only using ten percent of your brain, while the other ninety percent remains untapped potential, you are about to be surprised. It's true that about ten percent of your nervous system is made up of hard-working neurons, diligently delivering messages back and forth between your senses and your brain. Much of the rest of your nervous system is made up of neuroglia (derived from the Greek word "glue"), a mixture of various cell types that spend much of their time supporting neurons so they can continue to support you.

For example, microglia, a type of specialized immune cells, were originally thought to just connect neurons and hold them together. These cells are found all over the brain and spinal cord, responding to damage in the brain and nervous system. While neurons are constantly taking in information about your environment, microglia are hard at work sampling their own environment, patrolling for anything that looks out of place.

BioFrontiers Institute faculty member, Hang Hubert Yin, an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is eager to tap into that other 90 percent of our nervous system that we've been wondering about. In addition to helping protect our brains and nervous system, microglia play an important role in the inflammation that accompanies any damage to your brain. In some cases, though, microglia overreact to perceived damage to the brain and nervous system, introducing inflammation where it should be controlled. Many diseases are associated with these misguided microglia, including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Yin's focus is on toll-like receptors (TLR), specifically TLR1 and TLR 2 that sit on the surface of each microglia and form a macromolecular complex called a heterodimer. These are pattern recognition receptors designed to identify danger signals and activate an immune response. Humans have ten known toll-like receptors in their cells. In some cases, toll-like receptors can be activated to provide a powerful immune response to a disease, harnessing the body's own ability to fight off illness. In other cases, the immune response from these receptors needs to be managed, like in the case of many autoimmune diseases, which turn the body's immunity on itself. Yin is seeking ways to control the inflammatory response of microglia through these toll-like receptors.  Read more