Circuit-aligned specialization of human basal ganglia astrocytes.

Three anatomically organized human basal ganglia astrocyte subgroups—striatal gray matter, extra-striatal gray matter, and white matter—are distinguished by neurotransmitter transporter expression and synapse-associated programs.

• Why it matters: Astrocytes shape synapses, but their diversity in the human basal ganglia is not well mapped, limiting circuit-level interpretation of astrocyte roles.
• What they did: The study integrated single-nucleus transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling with spatial transcriptomics to define transporter- and synapse-program differences, then used a deep learning sequence model to infer subgroup-specific enhancer codes.
• The result: The molecular distinctions generalize brain-wide, dorsal versus ventral striatal populations align with distinct microcircuits, and enhancer-code recovery from enhancer-AAV datasets supports targeted viral vector design.

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