Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Published online: 23 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41583-026-01054-0 Recent technological advances have provided novel understanding of the spatiotemporal relationship between gene expression and protein levels. In this Review, Khakh and colleagues summarize recent work on astrocyte proteomes and subproteomes, emphasizing methodological breakthroughs and new biological insights relevant to fundamental astrocyte biology in neural circuits.