Exploitable, highly context-specific astrocytes

To investigate the functional heterogeneity of astrocytes from a defined brain region, we designed 14 experimental manipulations including Huntington's disease models, pathological challenges, ionic and GPCR signaling alterations, and analyzed the transcriptomic profiles of striatal astrocytes. From the analyses, we have identified context-specific changes of striatal astrocytes. Total 48 samples from 24 adult mice were used in this data set. Astrocyte RiboTag AAV was injected into the striatum to extract RNA specifically from striatal astrocytes. We ablated dopaminergic neurons by MPTP, used an OCD mouse model (SAPAP3 knockout), and activated Gi-GPCR pathway in striatal astrocytes of R6/2 mice. After tissue homogenization, RNA was purified from (i) cleared lysate as the input sample, and (ii) astrocyte-specific ribosome-associated RNA precipitated via a hemagglutinin (HA) tag as the IP sample.