A team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science has created the first human brain-wide map of gene expression data.
The achievement marks a major milestone for the Allen Institute, which previously had released similar data sets for the mouse brain. The data set will allow scientists to test new hypotheses about how the particular genetic codes of different brain areas lead to the unfathomably complex, unified organ.
The task of creating an atlas of human gene expression in the brain is not an easy one. First, acquiring clinically normal brains can be a drag — brains can be among the hardest organs to get permission to excise, and to chop up for study.
Share this article
Once a sample is available, the scientists need to be extremely precise with how they partition the brain so they can reliably connect genes to regions. One wrong cut and the data become imperfect.
View the original article here: First human whole-brain genetic map created
