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Genetic Mapping of Mouse Brain Complete
Vicissitude writes "A 3-D reference atlas of the genes that are active in the mouse brain is now complete. The atlas was declared finished on Tuesday, although scientists have been using it regularly for more than a year. The project was started in 2002 with $100 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen." From the article: "'Since mice and humans share more than 90 percent of genes, the Allen Brain Atlas has enormous potential for understanding human neurological diseases and disorders affecting more than 50 million Americans each year,' the Allen Institute for Brain Science said. These include Alzheimer's disease, which affects 4.5 million Americans, autism, which may occur in one in every 175 births, epilepsy, which affects 2.7 million Americans, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease."
this many million Americans, that many million Americans, does anybody else matter on this planet?
I look forward to hearing about researchers who have made use of this.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Now the gene mapping is finished, the real work can now begin.... I only half jokingly say this as all of the physiology needs to be performed on a baseline dataset now. It's interesting that a whole host of talents and technologies that were eclipsed by molecular biology and genetic engineering are now coming back into vogue. Technologies like electrophysiology and electron microscopy are now in hot demand.
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Can this newfound knowledge be used to someday take over the world?
Genetic Mapping of Mouse Brain Complete
Then they can get started on mapping Pinky, and then they can take over the world!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Considering all those medical advances related to enhancing the life of mice I must assume that our planet is run by a small group of super-enhanced labmice which managed to escape and take over.
Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!"
I would rather be a mouse, they get better treatment
Since mice and humans share more than 90 percent of genes, the Allen Brain Atlas has enormous potential for understanding human neurological diseases and disorders affecting more than 50 million Americans each year
That's an instant classic. Genes don't exactly work like this you know?
90% same genes isn't like 90% same species. We share over 70% with insects and over 50% with plants.
Yet, I wanna see someone claim that by dissecting oranges he can help us fight heart diseases.
Let's face it: he's a scientist, he wanted to do it, he had to convince the sponsors. That's fine..
Thanks Paul, while others like the Google boys and Redhat execs are wasting their money on 747's and $80,000 kitchen cabinets (no joke, look it up), you are actually doing something useful with your money!
What I am very curious to know is what the verdict is on the 99% of Junk DNA that mice have. Humans have a similar scenario but what "junk" means is that this DNA does not code into proteins or seem to have a function. I recall reading an article where lab scientists had successfully removed a large chunk of what was believed to be junk DNA.
Every mouse born missing that trait suffered a severe spine defect which looked like multiple sclerosis beyond belief. It was then believed that this deformity occurred in every mouse born but when inserted into junk DNA, it would be rendered harmless. Without the junk DNA to absorb the common deformity, the protein sequence for spinal cells was effectively altered nearly all the time.
Hopefully with this mapping, we'll be able to better understand mice (and, in turn humans and optimistically eukaryotes in general). And perhaps we'll be able to settle the dispute as to whether or not junk DNA has functions beyond our insight.
Unfortunately, I think one of the even more important tools for figuring out how Alzheimer's Desease occurs is understanding how proteins fold. Hopefully this will aid researchers looking to do this as a valuable tool.
My work here is dung.
This brain mapping might be just about a step too far with mouse experimentation. If you add up all the other improvements on them, and make them smart enough to escape, they are going to kick our asses. Then take our women. Not that the last part will bother too many people here. :p
/narf
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
We happen to be only the third most intelligent ones...
Now maybe they can figure out why my scroll-wheel stops working at random times.
A coworker of mine tried to astonish me with the same fact. He said, "We have over 90% of the same genes as mice!"
It's not too astonishing to me. Considering from the point of DNA, you are no where close to the end product. I'm not a biologist but to my knowledge, DNA can be one of four acids. Those, in turn are read in varying lengths to make one of twenty different amino acids. Those amino acids can be read in varying lengths to be one of hundreds (if not thousands) different proteins which are the building blocks of life.
So if you want to shock me and tell me that between a mouse and I, nine in every ten genes is the same, I'm not going to be too shocked. If one in every ten is different, I could see the above transformation resulting in something no where near the same thing.
But the basic idea is very very well founded, any gene to protein research is good research. Since we know very little about that process and find it quite difficult to predict. The answer to Alzheimer's is believed to be rooted in this process and, by working backwards, we may be able to isolate the genes that cause it. That is, of course, assuming it's due to a twisted protein which may or may not be caused by a common virus or just age.
My work here is dung.
most /.'ers seem to be much closer than that 50% to the plant species... vegetable!
...non-Americans get these diseases too? The article doesn't make it clear *cough*
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I've never met a mouse with schizophrenia.
A 3-D reference atlas of the genes that are active in the mouse brain is now complete
Obviously they could only have mapped the portion of the mouse that intrudes into our dimension. Being transdimensional superior creatures, there's no way limited creatures in our dimension could get access to the most important parts of the mouse brain.
When are we going to see it on Google maps?
If enithin kan gow rong it whil. (Murfey)
He meant mice share 90% of their genes with Americans.
**me runs away, comes back
If it was as simple as that, we would have a map of the human brain in a few days time (10% left to analyse). The human brain is an entirely different story. We share many of the same features, like memory funtions and the parts of the cerebral-cortex that control them, but human brain functions are incredibly complex, particularly involving cognitive psychology. Psychology and neurology remain very primitive sciences at the time being. Not long ago, we were chopping off pieces of mice's brains to find out what controlled memory loss. Electrical signals are produced rapidly and continously, the chemistry is impossible to study in real time.
Therefore I think this is not even significant for mice. Just because we know what genes produce which cell types does not mean we understand their operation.
http://www.brainatlas.org/aba/
http://www.brain-map.org/welcome.do
Mice and Americans share 90% of the genes? Wow!
...
Oh, wait that was mice and humans
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
How hard a map can that be. You can likely download it from the manufacturer.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
This is a good thing since 99% of the world has a brain the size of mice.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. -Albert Einstein
\
Who's brain was it? George W's?
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
this article (Microsoft founder funds mapping of rodent brain "software")
plus the article about Intel having a 80 core processor ("hardware")
makes me fearful that they are secretly developing an AI "rodent" that will overrun the planet.
we will have to purchase frequent "upgrades" to keep the bugger from eating our young, and the inevitable infection with viruses or worms will threaten the safety of mankind itself..
we will be forced to escape the earth to save ourselves....oh crikey!!, doesn't Paul Allen have money invested in space travel as well....
Sorry, couldn't resist >.
Next: a joint project with Scalar Composites to develop the laminated mouse brain computer.
Well, Mr. Smith, I have goods news — and I have bad news. The good news is because of the Allen Brain Atlas, we have been able to determine exactly what is wrong with you and precisely how to put you back together.
The bad news is when the procedure is complete, your name will be "Algernon."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What's wrong with disecting oranges? Have you ever seen an orange suffer from heart disease? Neither have I! The only sensible way to save the human race is to create human-orange hybrids that are juicy yet sport opposing thumbs. We shall call them 'Homo orange'.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
I for one welcome our new genetically mapped mouse overlords.
I did not find any peer-reviewed journal reference for this work. Or at least reference to the validity of the methodology they are using.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Better than Apple's original brick-shaped mice, for sure.
1) The Allen Brain Atlas will contain over 1 PetaByte of data.
e n-brain-atlas-misconceptions.html
False. The orders-of-magnitude calculation was done by multiplying 20,000 genes by a trillion neurons, but this is a gross overestimate. A more realistic computation involves multiplying the number of datasets they have, which is around 20,000, with the average size of each dataset. The average size of each dataset is about 10 slices, times the size per slice. The size per slice is about 10,000 pixels wide, which works out to 100 megapixels per slice. Without image compression, each megapixel is 3 megabytes (one byte for each color channel), which means that each slice is 300 megabytes, uncompressed.
Thus, a more realistic calculation of the size of the Allen Brain Atlas is
(20,000 datasets)*(10 slices per dataset)*(300 megabytes per slice) = 6 TeraBytes.
So, the real size of the Allen Brain Atlas is around 6 TeraBytes, which is a far cry from a PetaByte.
2) Since mice and humans share more than 90 percent of genes, the Allen Brain Atlas has enormous potential for understanding human neurological diseases and disorders.
False. We share over 70% with insects and over 50% with plants, so according to the logic of the Allen Brain Atlas people, dissecting the genetic maps of oranges he can help us fight heart diseases and schizophrenia.
3) The Allen Brain Atlas will provide the most detailed map of the most complex organ.
False. http://brainmaps.org/ provides the highest resolution whole brain maps, and not just for mice, but for primates and other species. The resolution of BrainMaps.org data is over twice as good as that of the Allen Brain Atlas.
4) The Allen Brain Atlas has already led to several significant new findings about the brain.
False. There are absolutely no peer-reviewed publications over any significant new findings from the Allen Brain Atlas. I do believe that significant findings can be made, but there is nothing published about it in peer-reviewed articles as yet.
5) The Allen Brain Atlas provides a complete genetic map of the mouse brain.
False. It says nothing about silent DNA or junk DNA, not to mention splice variants.
http://braintechsci.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-all