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Genetic Mapping of Mouse Brain Complete

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Sep 26, 2006 05:37 PM
from the smart-roadmaps dept.
Biotech Technology
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."
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  • only americans suffer from brain diseases (Score:5, Funny)

    by chifut (998159) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:40PM (#16207351)
    this many million Americans, that many million Americans, does anybody else matter on this planet?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by O'Laochdha (962474)
      But the other people don't get them American grant money!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by doshell (757915)

        So if e.g. European researchers found a cure for AIDS and didn't share that knowledge with the USA because they had done it under a European grant, would you be happy to still be infected until you found the cure on your own?

        I'm going to be modded down by this, but it really takes a bigot to react the way you did. Your attitude is exactly the kind of thing the original poster was condemning (or maybe you're just a troll trying to get some entertainment).

        • Re:only americans suffer from brain diseases (Score:4, Funny)

          by cyclop (780354) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @06:39PM (#16208149) Homepage Journal
          Hi. You are welcome in the magic world of sarcasm. I know, it can take a bit to get used to.

          • It might be sarcasm (and you saying it doesn't automatically make it so), but that doesn't do away with the fact that the attitude I was referring to is common.

        • Re:only americans suffer from brain diseases (Score:4, Insightful)

          by O'Laochdha (962474) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @07:25PM (#16208631) Journal
          Okay, first off, that was a joke.

          Seriously, though, it is somewhat important to emphasize the disease's effect on the US to get US grants. If we found a cure for AIDS, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd share it. However, if AIDS (or one of the diseases in question, or any other) were rare in the US, but more widespread overseas, it would be fairly difficult to get grants, and most scientists would spend their time on other, more lucrative things. Selfish, maybe, but I don't think there's a country in the world that doesn't put some degree of priority on domestic issues. And for all we talk about scientists only being interested in grants, they can't do their job without them.

          A better allegory would be: if no one in Japan (where the disease is rare) cared to look into a cure for AIDS, would we be happy to remain infected until a more afflicted country found the cure on its own?

          • Re:only americans suffer from brain diseases (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Spikeles (972972) * on Tuesday September 26 2006, @07:31PM (#16208695)
            If we found a cure for AIDS, there's no doubt in my mind that we'd share it.
            Ahhahahahaha. You made me laugh.. *wipes tears* You are joking right? You are saying that in this day and age of patents/trademarks and corporate secrets they would share the biggest cash cow of the millenium! I think not.. they will milk it for every drop it's worth, you will have to pay the discoverers royalties whenever you produce it, if they even let you produce it, assuming they don't set up their own production plant. Imagine it.. The cure! You could charge whatever price you want, sell it on ebay! it'd be worth trillions, if you ever sell it, and if someone figures out the chemical breakdown and produces it you could sue their ass off for even more money.
                • How does it help the pharmaceutical companies for potential customers to die? People are dying because as of yet there is not cure.

          • Okay, I'm glad to know you were only joking. It is really difficult to tell when so many people around here have such an arrogant attitude when it comes to the deeds of their countrymen. You are right in that grants are essential for the development of science to function, and those who grant them should be praised. I won't question that. My point was that the way the article was worded was american-centric (considering that the issue is not strictly a domestic problem) and, as others have noted in this thr

        • Squeak! (Score:4, Funny)

          by fyngyrz (762201) * on Tuesday September 26 2006, @10:36PM (#16210189) Homepage Journal
          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

          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."

    • Judge a country not by its words but by its actions.

      So, no.

    • Woah (Score:5, Funny)

      by Darkman, Walkin Dude (707389) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:58PM (#16207623) Homepage

      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

    • Re:only americans suffer from brain diseases (Score:4, Insightful)

      by x2A (858210) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:58PM (#16207627)
      Yeah first thing I though too... this is one of the problems with americans that's responsible for the rest of the world's disdain with them... somebody before on slashdot said if only they used the word "people" in place of "americans", the rest of the world wouldn't grind their teeth hearing it.

      In this case, they're talking statistics, in may not make sense to try and say how many people in the world suffer from various conditions, but it could still be worded so much better, eg:

      "...effecting more than 50 million people in America alone..."

      doesn't sound like a bunch of americans thinking they're a higher species than anybody else on the planet.

      • but it could still be worded so much better, eg:
        "...effecting more than 50 million people in America alone..."

        Or preferably,
        "...affecting more than 50 million people in America alone..."

        • haha quite convincing, but you missed the bit about coming to 'bomb my ass' which would pretty much have completed the stereotype image ;-)

            • For what it's worth, I am sorry for whatever "america" has done to you to make you hate it so much, that you find yourself trying to impersonate a stereotypical "ignorant american" in such a fasion to try and make otherwise "on the fence" readers move more to your side and hate america more... but truely the only way any evil in the world can be overcome is to rise above it.

              Propergander, dishonesty, and these kind of attacks only weaken your resolve. You will give the stupid and the evil an alibi; "it wasn'
          • I think by "us" it means america rather than anonymous cowards, ya know, in the same way that bush represents america... all of it...

    • If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, Pinky -- forget the stupid humans. Once we rule the planet, they won't matter. Ooops - did I call you Pinky? Sorry, George. Hey, did you see where I put my extra shotgun shells?
    • Let's see, this was a quote from an American press release obviously intended for an American audience. It was picked up on Slashdot, an American website run by Americans for Americans.

      As much as you people in other countries want to globalize everything American, we Americans don't necessarily agree. So please go piss off. Or, if you're not English, go do whatever to yourself as you say it in your own country.
    • It is a lot easier to get the statistics for the U.S. than the entire world.

  • Now for the real work... (Score:4, Informative)

    by BWJones (18351) * on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:42PM (#16207385) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • great (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:46PM (#16207455) Homepage
    Genetic Mapping of Mouse Brain Complete

    Then they can get started on mapping Pinky, and then they can take over the world!
    • Then they can get started on mapping Pinky, and then they can take over the world!

      Let me guess - you suffer from short attention span and never saw it through to the ending? </kidding>

  • It's sure good to be a mouse these days... (Score:5, Funny)

    by teutonic_leech (596265) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:47PM (#16207463)
    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!"
    • Why do you think the world exists in the first place? Not for humans, surely!
      • LOL - why didn't I think of that analogy - hehehe. I really don't think that Bush is THAT stupid - he's simply a corrupt, inarticulate, arrogant SOB - sometimes I wish he was simply stupid...

  • Wow, someone didn't do his homework (Score:5, Insightful)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:54PM (#16207563)
    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..

    • 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.

      Ah but you see, you are undermining your own argument - using your numbers, we share at best 50% of genes with the oranges. That's not the 90% we have in common with mice. And I'm sure you'd agree that dissecting mice to fight heart diseases doesn't sound nearly as far-fetched. In fact, with all the drug testing on m

    • Let's Do the Math (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 26 2006, @06:04PM (#16207695) Homepage Journal
      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.
    • You do realize that many protein and metabolic processes work the same in rats and mice as they do in other mammalians, like humans..... right? You do realize that it is possible to precisely emulate a disease process in humans by engineering in the same genetic defect in other organisms that is found in humans, right?

      Additionally, it is possible once we understand the biochemical, developmental, metabolic, proteomic processes in "lower" organisms to get a better understanding for how to attack problems in
      • For instance, amphibians and many fish species have much more sophisticated retinas that we mammalians do. Despite this level of sophistication, they are able to fix their retinas when damaged which is something that we humans have either forgotten how to do or lost the machinery required through evolution.

        Don't forget that we did not diverge from modern fish. Fish today are just as modern as us.

        We diverged from a common ancestor. It's quite likely that common ancestor did not have this adaptation
        • Don't forget that we did not diverge from modern fish. Fish today are just as modern as us.

          Precisely, and this is why I used quotes to refer to lower organisms. So, when mammalians went underground, we lost some functionality that may or may not have already been present. However, this does not mean that we cannot engineer in that functionality once we understand the pathways and expression profiles and timepoints.

    • Yet, I wanna see someone claim that by dissecting oranges he can help us fight heart diseases.
      I think that you'll find that most doctors have, at some point in their education, dissected and studied fruit.
    • First of all, I'm guessing there's a disproportionate difference between 90% similar and 50% similar. Secondly, the study of plants has yielded remedies such as tamoxifen because there are genetic similarities between plants and humans. Nerve agents that kill bugs make good chemical weapons against people.

  • Junk DNA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 26 2006, @05:57PM (#16207615) Homepage Journal
    What I am very curious to know is what the verdict is on the 99% of Junk DNA [wikipedia.org] 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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by NinjaFarmer (833539)
      "Junk DNA" sounds like some of the code I've seen. Nobody knows what it is, or what it does, but nothing works right without it.

      • Re:Junk DNA (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @06:38PM (#16208119) Homepage Journal
        Every time I hear about so-called "junk DNA" that doesn't seem to do anything important, it reminds me of the ancient Egyptians when they would mummify a deceased nobleman. They hollowed out the corpse and delicately preserved what they thought of as the departed's most precious organs - heart, stomach, etc. - in sealed jars next to the mummy. When they got to the brain, it didn't appear to be doing anything important that they could see, so they just threw it away.

  • Actually, it is the mice experimenting on them... (Score:4, Funny)

    by DMiax (915735) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @06:00PM (#16207659)

    We happen to be only the third most intelligent ones...

  • ...non-Americans get these diseases too? The article doesn't make it clear *cough*

  • Liars! (Score:4, Funny)

    by TekPolitik (147802) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @06:19PM (#16207887) Journal

    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.

  • Mice and Americans share 90% of the genes? Wow!

    Oh, wait that was mice and humans ...
  • How hard a map can that be. You can likely download it from the manufacturer.

  •   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

  • ..similarity to Zonk's brain deemed "coincidental" (Score:3, Funny)

    by BeeBeard (999187) on Tuesday September 26 2006, @08:59PM (#16209539)
    Sorry, couldn't resist >.

  • Next: a joint project with Scalar Composites to develop the laminated mouse brain computer [technovelgy.com].

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