Bulk RNA-Seq of brain tissue of suicide completers

This study provides a transcriptional analysis of post-mortem samples from a subpopulation of suicide completers with previously reported glial abnormalities ("low expressors", Nagy et al. 2015, DOI: 10.1038/mp.2014.21). We focused on BA25, a subregion of the prefrontal cortex prioritized for targeted medical interventions, due to its metabolic aberrations in disease. We found that outstanding portion of genes deregulated in MDD are enriched in glia, with astrocyte-specific genes representing the highest fraction. Then we employed a novel protocol for enriching astrocytic nuclei to provide a detailed molecular signature of astrocytes in MDD.