ATG16L1 and major depressive disorder: During differentiation, autophagy-related genes in C2 followed a decrease in the expression level along the trajectory, such as ATG16L and LC3A (Fig. 3J), suggesting that this trajectory described the autophagy-related transcriptional changes during the transition from a homeostatic to a disease-associated cell state, which further demonstrated that autophagic changes in astrocytes in the PFC were associated with the pathology of MDD.