Understanding brain function in disease states requires detailed study of how specific populations of cells interact in a dynamic environment. Different cell types use distinct transcriptional mechanisms that result in remarkable heterogeneity of cellular transcriptomes (Doyle et al., 2008; Sugino et al., 2006). Recently, an Alzheimer’s disease model showed that transcriptome changes observed in whole tissue are driven primarily by specific cell types and not necessarily by global transcriptional regulation (Srinivasan et al., 2016).
