Among the autophagy-related genes investigated in the mouse depression model above, patients with MDD (n = 29) showed significantly increased transcript levels of ATG6 (P = 0.0004, FDR q value = 0.025; Figure 3(a)), ATG7 (P = 0.004, FDR q value = 0.045; Figure 3(b)), ATG12 (P = 0.002, FDR q value = 0.034; Figure 3(c)), and ATG5 (P = 0.005, FDR q value = 0.0497; Figure 3(d)) compared with healthy subjects (n = 56). Here, ATG12 is linked to major depressive disorder.