Philanthropists Paul G. Allen and Jody Patton funded the non-profit Allen Institute for Brain Science, located in Seattle, WA, to “identify and address key issues in neuroscience.” One of the Institute’s first achievements is the Allen Brain Atlas, a publicly available and free resource that shows which of 21,000 genes are expressed within different locations in the mouse brain.
You can download their Brain Atlas program (it’s big). I would strongly recommend that you follow the 5 minute tour and read the tutorial carefully before trying to explore the program itself. The site gets more than 4 million hits per month (!!) but loads quickly and easily (I do have a very fast connection at home, though).
I was doing some exploring of the dopamine 2 receptor gene…..but they nuked my picture. It doesn’t show up anymore. I’ll have to try again…..
Research using the atlas has already confirmed that 80 percent of genes are expressed in the brain, as opposed to previous estimates of 60-70 percent. Most researchers using the atlas say that it’s major benefit is saving time–work that would have taken years previously can be done in days.
If you want to explore the atlas, prepare to spend a little time with the controls. But I think you’ll find your efforts will pay off. This is science at its best.
3 Comments
neubrain · October 29, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Common misconceptions about the Allen Brain Atlas:
http://braintechsci.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-allen-brain-atlas-misconceptions.html
Laura Freberg · October 30, 2006 at 12:49 pm
The braintechsci site offers a lot of useful clarifications of what the atlas can and can’t do. Good reading.
jejabe13 · December 8, 2006 at 12:15 pm
I can’t wait to download the software for my computer. I think this type of research is very exciting. Knowing where different neurotransmitters have receptors in the brain is the an important step in developing medications with more specific effects.
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