Scientists get new tools to play with.

The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a non-profit medical research organization dedicated to innovative basic research on the nervous system and distributing its discoveries to researchers around the world. The Institute takes on "far-reaching projects at the intersection of biology and technology" - not surprising, it being the brainchild of philantropist Paul G. Allen.

Launched in 2003 with seed funds from Allen, it aims to be sustainable by seeking federal and state funds, along with private contributions and foundation awards, as part of an ongoing public-private partnership. Its first major project was the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas, a three-dimensional map of gene expression in the adult mouse brain. Similar in scale to the Human Genome Project, the Atlas is a dataset of expression patterns of approximately 20,000 genes covering the entire adult mouse brain down to the cellular level. The Brain Atlas was completed in 2006.

Following on from this success and in response to a call for support, Spinal Research awarded a grant to the Allen Institute for a similar mapping of the mouse spinal cord. This has now been completed and again, like the brain atlas, provides a comprehensive interactive database of gene expression mapped at cellular resolution across all segments of the mouse spinal cord.

World-wide, experts from the spinal research community have been working to identify interesting neuronal and non-neuronal genes (more than 17,000), their locations and differences in expression levels between the juvenile and adult cord. It simple terms it revealed what genes are switched on at different times from birth to adulthood - and where they are being switched on. I understand from those closely involved, that a lot of the grunt work – cell identification and counting – had to be done manually by volunteer students and young scientists.

What’s this actually mean? Well, judging by the numbers of people listening at posters today, it appears to be a welcome new resource. But is it a new play thing for the neuroscientist or something that may help people? Jane Roskams (Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) provided an example of some of the earliest discoveries made possible by the Atlas. Roskams said, “we thought that stem cells were found only at the centre of the spinal cord around something called the central canal. But it turns out that there is a previously unidentified type of cell, very similar to stem cells, around the edge of the cord, surrounding the white matter." She continued, "We didn't know they existed until we analysed the spinal atlas." The white matter is the region of the cord that houses all the communicating axons up and down the spine. Damage to the white matter is the major reason for the resulting paralysis after injury. "Expecting stem cells from the centre of the spinal cord to repair white matter on the outside may be too much to ask but if we can understand more about these newly identified cells around the perimeter (close to the white matter) and learn how to manipulate them for therapeutic effects we may be on to something", said Roskams.

This is only the beginning of an analysis that will hopefully reveal other novel cellular pathways that may be manipulated to enhance repair of injury and spinal cord disease.