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In the 5th century, in early medieval Ireland, Conall Gulban, an Irish king, gave his name to an area of land at the northwest tip of the Irish coast. His kingdom was called Tír Chonall, the “land of Conall”—or, today, Donegal.
Somewhere along the king’s descendant line, known as Cenél Conaill or “kindred of Conall,” it’s thought that a mistake arose in a scion’s genome—specifically, a mutation of a gene responsible for producing a protein called transthyretin (TTR). The genetic error resulted in the birth of a rare condition known as hereditary transthyretin (ATTR) amyloidosis.
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