Of mice and men: the allen brain atlas

Pinky and the Brain originally uploaded by _mpd_

In the last month or so, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen’s Allen Institute of Brain Science finally completed a 3-year project creating the world’s first brain atlas. It’s the first interactive 3D view mapping active regions of the brain to gene expression. And best of all, it’s free!

In 2003, Allen spent $141 million of his own money to build the Institute and began this mouse genome project based on the fact mice and men share 90% of their genes. There is an index of 21,000 genes with detailed cellular and molecular descriptions of the genes, an introductory video of the Brain Atlas project and the interactive 3D mouse brain.

This is the beginning of what neuroscientists hope will unlock our understanding of how the brain works and the key to finding cures for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, etc. The atlas has already taught neuroscientists something new. Before, researchers thought all neurons were the same and that the connections were key to signaling. However, the 3D atlas has shown them that brain cells show a diverse array of gene expression patterns, meaning that different brain cells use different genes at different times. Their next project will map the human cortex, the outer region of the brain which processes much of our sensory information. Now that’ll be cool to see.

Check out the site and video here: Allen Institute for Brain Science

Here’s the link to the 3D brain atlas.

Related Blogs

 

The connectivity map
Connectivity Map. Courtesy: the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard The media (or at least the nerd-media) has been all over the story about the “Connectivity Map,” so you’ll want t

The future of neuroscience
Image of the brain Although I got a chance to eat authenic southern “chicken fried chicken” (not a misprint… basically fried chicken cooked twice… don’t ask me why) in

Then, now and tomorrow: Canada’s ‘century of innovation’ in life sciences and health care
Want to feel proud of Canada? Look no further than the contributions Canadians have made to life sciences and health care innovation In 1921, Frederick Banting and Charles Best managed to extract ins

“But I saw it in a movie!”: Profs tackle Hollywood pseudo-science (free event)
Join us on Friday June 17 at MaRS at 6:30 PM in the Auditorium as a panel of experts show their favorite pseudo-science clips and unpack the effect they have on the public’s scientific literacy: (li

iPS cells take a beating
It sounded too good to be true – the addition of a handful of genes to an adult skin cell would transform it into a stem cell capable of being adapted into any tissue type. The excitement at Shinya

Sequencing technologies help start-ups boom
The genomics-based biotech industry is booming, according to BusinessWeek.  A recent example is Plexxikon, a US start-up that was acquired for a healthy US$935 million in February.  They developed

Tags: genetics, life sciences, neuroscience, science