A pan-astrocytic marker like Aldh1L1 will be needed to infer whether only reactive astrocytes expressing VIM and GFAP are affected in depression; however, this seems unlikely, as genes specific to both non-reactive and reactive astrocytes are downregulated in many brain regions in depressed suicides (27, 28, 51) and depressed non-suicides (52). Here, ALDH1L1 is linked to major depressive disorder.