A new study suggests that glial cells in both Huntington disease (HD) and schizophrenia share abnormal gene transcription patterns. RNA sequencing of glial progenitor cells derived from human pluripotent stem cells revealed preserved gene sets between the diseases that were distinct from healthy control donors. A large proportion of genes that were supressed in both diseases are involved in synaptic signalling, including OLIG2, TCF7L2 and ADGRL3, which regulate glutamate signalling. The results indicate that supressed glial receptivity to glutamate could contribute to pathology in both HD and schizophrenia.