How to Use glia in a Sentence

glia

noun
  • Next, get some as yet unknown number of support cells called glia.
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 3 Oct. 2018
  • All the other brain cells, called glia, were thought to serve purely supportive roles.
    — Laura Dattaro, Quanta Magazine, 18 Oct. 2023
  • Newman's own research focuses on non-neuronal cells in the brain called glia.
    — Marissa Fessenden, Smithsonian, 23 Jan. 2017
  • Instead other types of brain cells, called glia, are responsible.
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 18 Nov. 2019
  • And humans have many more of a certain kind of glia, called astrocytes, than do non-primate mammals.
    — Lisa Raffensperger, Discover Magazine, 7 Mar. 2013
  • Those gut feelings are driven by enteric nerve cells, including glia.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 21 Nov. 2023
  • Those cells, called radial glia, can be viewed like the framing timbers of a house under construction.
    — Linda Carroll, NBC News, 2 July 2019
  • These differences were observed in neurons and other brain cells—glia and immune cells called microglia.
    — Stephani Sutherland, Scientific American, 21 Jan. 2021
  • But the more neuroscientists examine glia, the more versatile these cells turn out to be.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 25 Mar. 2019
  • All of your neurons and glia and other bits must self-assemble, and their connections should change based on what your brain encounters.
    — Jacqueline Detwiler, Popular Mechanics, 3 Oct. 2018
  • Each cell in the image (both neurons and the support cells known as glia) was color-coded by hand, a process that took 150 hours.
    — Danielle Egan, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019
  • What drives such disorders, their findings suggest, is a process in which glia turn from nurturing neurons to destroying them.
    — Kenneth Miller, Discover Magazine, 6 Aug. 2017
  • But how can myelinating glia detect neural impulses flowing through axons?
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 12 Mar. 2020
  • Far from being mere valets to neurons, glia often take leading roles in protecting the brain’s health and directing its development.
    — Quanta Magazine, 27 Jan. 2020
  • Many different cellular changes could expand gray matter volume, including the birth of new neurons and of nonneuronal cells called glia.
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 12 Mar. 2020
  • The team wanted to switch the glia into neurons that would produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter also involved in movement (among other things).
    — Lacy Schley, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2018
  • Many autism risk genes appeared in progenitor cells, whereas schizophrenia genes were more active later—in glia and inhibitory neurons, for instance.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 24 Jan. 2020
  • This cross section of a mouse spinal cord, from 1899, shows radial glia cells, the Rodney Dangerfields of brain cells.
    — Sharon Begley, STAT, 3 May 2018
  • These findings, published in Nature, breach the rigid divide between signaling neurons and supportive glia.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 21 Nov. 2023
  • Today glia are known to help regulate metabolism, protect neurons and clean up cellular waste—critical but unglamorous roles.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 21 Nov. 2023
  • But when the researchers examined more precise subtypes of cells—a subset cells known as outer radial glia, for example—the comparisons started to break down.
    — Kelly Servick, Science | AAAS, 29 Jan. 2020
  • So the team came up with a collection of proteins that, ideally, would have reverted those glia to a stem-cell state, then spurred them into developing into dopamine-producing cells.
    — Lacy Schley, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2018
  • The most comprehensive atlas of the mouse brain to date, published today, identified 5,300 cell types, including both neurons and glia.
    — Quanta Magazine, 13 Dec. 2023
  • From there, the organoids develop automatically, first generating different types of neurons and then forming other brain cells called glia.
    — Simon Makin, Scientific American, 24 Jan. 2020
  • Neurovirology may take a place alongside sessions on long-term memory, synapses and glia at some future SFN meeting.
    — Gary Stix, Scientific American, 10 Nov. 2021
  • Even as excitement builds about glia in the enteric nervous system, scientists like Scavuzzo have fairly basic questions still to work out—such as how many types of enteric glia even exist.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, WIRED, 14 Jan. 2024
  • Even as excitement builds about glia in the enteric nervous system, scientists like Scavuzzo have fairly basic questions still to work out — such as how many types of enteric glia even exist.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 21 Nov. 2023
  • Getting quick-to-multiply glia to convert and start producing dopamine could serve as a therapy to help treat Parkinson’s and other disorders involving the neurotransmitter.
    — Lacy Schley, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2018
  • This reveals microglia as unexpected conductors in the brain's blood pressure orchestra, fine-tuning neuron-glia interactions through astrocyte pruning.
    — Pranjal Malewar, New Atlas, 3 Sep. 2025
  • The new theory postulates that establishing indelible memories that can be recalled long after sensory input or training on a task involves an interaction between glia and peculiar brain waves produced during sleep.
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 18 Nov. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'glia.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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