attempto online - Research
22.09.2022
Mapping the whole human brain: Tübingen researcher Philipp Berens contributes to global collaboration under Allen Institute’s lead
NIH BRAIN Initiative to fund primate brain atlases, maps of developing mouse brain, coordination and knowledge sharing, and brain function research
Scientists at the Allen Institute in Seattle (USA) are launching the brain equivalent of the Human Genome Project, leading a new global collaboration to map the approximately 200 billion cells in the human brain by their type and function.
The collaboration is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative as part of The BRAIN Initiative Cell Atlas Network, or BICAN, and will also build detailed atlases of macaque and marmoset brains. Led by Ed Lein, Ph.D., Senior Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and Hongkui Zeng, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the human and primate atlas grant project also includes sub-projects led by researchers from 17 other institutions in the U.S., Europe and Japan. One of them is Dr. Philipp Berens, professor at the University of Tübingen’s Institute for Ophthalmic Research. Tübingen is the only German university involved in the project. Together with Dmitry Kobak, PhD, research group leader in the Berens Lab, Philipp Berens will further develop machine learning methods to integrate multimodal data. The team’s aim is to investigate whether genetic identity, function and anatomy of cells match.
“We are aiming to create something transformative for the field that can only be done collaboratively, by bringing in an all-star cast of experts from a variety of disciplines,” Ed Lein said. “This is critical work: We need to understand the human brain better if we hope to treat diseases of the brain, and specifically we need a better understanding of brain function and structure. The cell atlases we’re building with the support of the BRAIN Initiative promise to lead to a more rapid understanding of the basis of many brain diseases.”
Four additional BICAN grants to the Allen Institute will support coordination and administration of the network; construction of a web-based knowledge platform using BICAN findings to accelerate scientific discovery; mapping the developing mouse brain; and tying mouse brain cells and function. All,findings, techniques and data from these projects will be made publicly available.
From mice to us
These projects build off earlier NIH BRAIN Initiative-funded projects at the Allen Institute and elsewhere to map the cells of the entire mouse brain and parts of the human brain using the full suite of genes switched on in individual cells, a technique known as single-cell transcriptomics. Understanding the cell types in commonly studied mammals like mice is key to improving translational research to ultimately benefit people suffering from brain diseases and disorders, said Zeng.
“We need to better understand the similarities and differences between the human brain and those of other primates and rodents, which often serve as the subjects for research,” Zeng said. “Comparing cell types is one of the most robust and accurate ways of comparing the brains of different species, and we are doing this at a refined level and at the most comprehensive scale we can achieve. Better relating animal studies and animal models with the structure and function of the human brain itself — that’s one of the major goals we want to achieve.”
Together, the five awards total over $173 million in funding to support these projects, including portions of the projects carried out at collaborating institutions, over the next five years. The Tübingen team will receive about 300.000 euros.
“With the announcement of the BICAN awards, we are making an exciting transition in the overall BRAIN Initiative cell census program, which began in 2014,” said Dr. John Ngai, Director of the NIH BRAIN Initiative. “These awards will enable researchers to explore the multifaceted characteristics of the more than 200 billion neurons and non-neuronal cells in the human brain at unprecedented detail and scale — a feat in advanced technologies and cross-team research collaboration that will reveal new paradigms for understanding how pathological changes in particular groups of brain cells could cause neurologic and neuropsychiatric disorders.”
We have hundreds of different kinds of brain cells – why?
Two of the newly funded BICAN projects aim to address a key unanswered question in neuroscience: What do our different kinds of brain cells actually do? One of these projects aims to marry neuron function with cell type in the regions of the mouse brain that process what the animal sees. The scientists involved will develop new methods that use a high-resolution microscope to visualize specific kinds of cells in the mouse brain; these experiments will follow experiments capturing those same neurons’ activity as animals perceive and react to their visual environments.
The primate brain atlas project will also marry cellular maps with brain function, using a technique known as functional MRI that captures blood flow in the brain: Active regions of the brain are correlated with higher levels of blood flow. The researchers will then correlate active regions of the brain with specific cell types using an emerging method known as spatial transcriptomics, which labels cell types in their original location in the brain. The human atlas researchers will also expand experiments long underway at the Allen Institute that study the details of living human neurons using brain tissue donated by Seattle-area brain surgery patients.
Based on an Allen Institute press release
Additional information
Contact:
Prof. Dr. Philipp Berens
University of Tübingen
Institute for Ophthalmic Research
+49 7071 29-88833
philipp.berensspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de