Allen Brain Atlas
[citation needed] There are also three related projects with data banks: Glioblastoma, Mouse Diversity, and Sleep.
[citation needed] It is the hope of the Allen Institute that their findings will help advance various fields of science, especially those surrounding the understanding of neurobiological diseases.
During these meetings David Anderson from the California Institute of Technology proposed the idea that a three-dimensional atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain would be of great use to the neuroscience community.
The project used a technique for mapping gene expression developed by Gregor Eichele and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany.
They aim to advance the research and knowledge about neurobiological conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Autism with their mapping of gene expression throughout the brain.
The Brain Atlas projects also follow the "Allen Institute" motto with their open release of data and findings.
Within the Brain Atlases, these 3-D ISH digital images and graphs reveal, in color, the regions where a given gene is expressed.
The gene expression patterns in normal individuals provide a standard for comparing and understanding altered phenotypes.
The explorer uses a multicolor scale and contains multiple planes of the brain that let viewers see differences in density and expression level.
The images are a composite of many averaged samples so it is useful when comparing to individuals with abnormally low gene expression.
The hope of the project is that it will allow scientists to gain a better understanding of brain diseases and disorders such as autism and depression.
The atlas is also geared toward furthering research into mental health disorders and brain injuries such as Alzheimer's disease, autism, schizophrenia and drug addiction.
[5] This atlas enhances the ability of neuroscientists to study how pollutants and genetic mutations effect the development of the brain.
A plan for the future includes expanding the amount of data to about 20,000 genes spanning the full length of the spinal cord.
