Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle are today celebrating the completion of a new digital atlas of the mouse brain. The achievement will likely lead to a greater understanding of how the human brain works.
I visited the Institute last week, spoke to founder Paul Allen about the project, and filed reports for NPR "Day to Day" and Wired News.
Mice brains and human brains have significant differences, but are similar enough that a complete "atlas" of the mouse brain is seen by many scientists to be as important a milestone as the Human Genome Project, which mapped the DNA sequence.
Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft 30 years ago with Bill Gates and is one of the world's richest men, donated $100 million to create a searchable 3-D digital map called the Allen Brain Atlas. The map is the inaugural project of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Allen's funding helped to assemble a dream team of scientists, who methodically scanned ultra-thin slices of mouse brain with the aid of robot helpers. Those scans help to identify how individual genes are "turned on" in different areas of the brain.
Link to archived audio report for the NPR News program "Day to Day," including an interview with Mr. Allen.
Link to related text and images at Wired News.
Image: Top, a cutaway view from the Allen Brain Explorer shows a 3-D rendering of mouse-brain anatomy, with reference planes mirroring a coordinate system used to "map" the brain. Below, Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science sort slides holding ultra-thin slices of mouse brains, which are scanned by a computer to track how more than 20,000 genes express themselves at the cellular level. Allen Institute for Brain Science © 2006.
