Stockholm, Sweden and Seattle, Wash. — March 17, 2008 — The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) and the Allen Institute for Brain Science announced today that the INCF will contribute infrastructure and support services to enhance global access to the Institute’s Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain. Publicly available for free to encourage widespread use and collaboration, the Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain is a Web-based, genome-wide map of gene expression. It is actively used by scientists worldwide to advance research on the brain in health and disease.
Through the partnership agreement, the INCF is operating a mirror, or direct copy, of the atlas from its Secretariat in Stockholm, Sweden. The INCF will ensure the sustainability and technical maintenance of the mirror site, as well as optimal Internet connectivity, in order to guarantee the highest possible service performance and quality in Europe.
The Allen Institute is providing INCF with all content and data required for the mirror site. The Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain contains expression patterns of approximately 20,000 genes mapped throughout the entire adult mouse brain, revealing where in the brain each gene is expressed, or “turned on” down to the cellular level.
“Helping brain researchers worldwide augment and accelerate their research programs is central to our mission,” said Elaine Jones, chief operating officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. “Providing free and easy global access to our data is, thus, a top priority for the Allen Institute. We are thrilled to work with INCF to mirror the Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain in Europe and thus enhance its performance for researchers overseas.”
“The Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain is a unique neuroinformatics resource”, said Jan Bjaalie, executive director of the INCF. “The INCF sees a future of highly valuable services like this becoming more and more interoperable and interlinked, to the benefit of neuroscience researchers. By entering this collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science the INCF aims to play a key role in making this happen.”
Challenge and the benefits
The Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain is a uniquely comprehensive source of information about gene activity in the brain. Each month, approximately 10,000 unique users from universities, research institutes, pharmaceutical companies and government laboratories, and others worldwide access the atlas. The INCF’s mirroring of the atlas aims to balance the load of the global demands and relieve the Seattle-based servers, thus allowing for faster responses to queries. Redirection to the European mirror will occur automatically and in response to traffic and load of the servers. The service should counterbalance any increases in traffic and significantly improve the efficiency of the overall services provided by the Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain.
This collaboration brings together an international outreach organization, the INCF, and a U.S.-based non-profit medical research organization, the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Together, these organizations share the mission to provide new and improved resources and infrastructure intended to accelerate scientific progress towards a better understanding of the brain.
The launch of the brain atlas mirror inaugurates a three-year partnership with a main objective to extend and enhance the quality of services provided by the Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain for neuroscientists within Europe. In addition, the atlas database is undeniably a valuable resource that presents opportunities for further development of tools, models and resource integration services, a key element of the INCF mission.
Technical operation and server hosting is located at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, an organization with strong technology expertise and advanced computer operation facilities.
About the Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain
The Allen Brain Atlas—Mouse Brain, the Allen Institute for Brain Science’s inaugural project, is a free, Web-based, genome-wide map of gene expression throughout the mouse brain. Similar in scale to the Human Genome Project, the atlas reveals the expression patterns of approximately 20,000 genes throughout the entire adult mouse brain down to the cellular level. Since its completion in September 2006, the Allen Institute has continued to enhance the atlas with additional features and tools to further increase its utility to the scientific community. Accessed by approximately 10,000 distinct users each month, researchers in academic, pharmaceutical, government and other labs worldwide are using the data to address a wide range of questions about the brain in health and disease.
About the Allen Institute for Brain Science
Located in Seattle, Washington, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, www.alleninstitute.org, is an independent, 501(c)(3) non-profit medical research organization dedicated to performing innovative brain research and disseminating its discoveries to researchers around the world. In doing so, the Institute aims to advance a new understanding of diseases that result from disorders of the brain. Launched in 2003 with a seed contribution from philanthropist Paul G. Allen, the Allen Institute seeks federal and state funds, along with private contributions and foundation awards, as part of an ongoing public-private partnership to sustain the organization. The Institute’s first project, the Allen Brain Atlas, is available online at www.brain-map.org.
About the INCF
The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF, www.incf.org) coordinates and fosters international activities for discovery and innovation in neuroscience and related fields. Established in 2005 through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Science Forum, the INCF catalyzes global knowledge flow and scientific interaction by developing, maintaining and evaluating worldwide programs, standards, guidelines and infrastructures in neuroinformatics to further our understanding of the human brain and its diseases. With its Secretariat at the Karolinska Institutet and Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, the INCF achieves its international outreach through its national nodes in 14 current member countries across the globe.
About the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden's technical research and engineering education capacity at university level. Education and research cover a broad spectrum - from natural sciences to all the branches of engineering as well as architecture, industrial engineering and management, urban planning, work science and environmental engineering. KTH also has extensive international research and educational exchange programmes with universities and colleges in Europe, the USA, Australia and Asia. KTH was founded in 1827 and the main campus has been located in attractive, and now listed, buildings in central Stockholm since 1917.