In order to catalyze research in developmental neuroscience, the National Institutes of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research has awarded a contract to the Allen Institute for Brain Science, partnered with researchers at the University of California at Davis, to generate an atlas of gene expression in the developing rhesus macaque brain. This atlas is a free online resource with a unique set of data and tools aimed to create a developmental neuroanatomical framework for exploring the cellular and molecular architecture of the developing postnatal primate brain with direct relevance for human brain development.
The NHP atlas will consist of three major components, to be made available incrementally over the course of the project from its initiation in 2008 to its completion in 2011. First, the atlas will present the cellular distributions of a set of functionally important and anatomically restricted mRNA transcripts using a standardized high throughput in situ hybridization (ISH) platform. These data will focus on five major brain regions during developmental periods clinically important for a variety of human neurodevelopmental disorders, including prefrontal cortex, primary visual cortex, hippocampus, amygdala and ventral striatum. Second, the atlas will provide high resolution genome-wide transcriptional profiles of these brain regions and functional subdivisions of these regions using laser microdissection and rhesus macaque-specific DNA microarrays. Third, a developmental stage-specific reference series consisting of high resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Nissl histology will provide a neuroanatomical context for these gene expression data. Finally, a suite of web-based tools will allow researchers to search for genes associated with specific functional brain regions and stages of brain development. These data and tools are designed to provide a valuable public resource for researchers and educators to explore neurodevelopment in non-human primates, and a key evolutionary link between other web-based gene expression atlases for adult and developing mouse and human brain.
