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 Institutes Allen Brain AtlasMouse Brain. Publicly available for free to encourage widespread use and collaboration, the Allen Brain AtlasMouse 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 AtlasMouse 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 AtlasMouse Brain in Europe and thus enhance its performance for researchers overseas.
The Allen Brain AtlasMouse 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
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| Contact: Elli Chatzopoulou elli.chatzopoulou@incf.org 46-852-487-491 INCF - International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Source:Eurekalert |