Some of these receptors are particularly relevant to disease: TREM2 is a phagocytic receptor mediating microglial phagocytosis of amyloid plaques (Yuan et al., 2016), synapses (Filipello et al., 2018), and neurons (Linnartz-Gerlach et al., 2019; Popescu et al., 2022), and TREM2 variants can confer risk for AD and other neurodegenerative diseases (Zhou et al., 2019). This evidence concerns the gene TREM2 and Alzheimer disease.