BrainMaps features the highest resolution whole-brain atlases ever constructed, with over 50 terabytes of brain image data directly accessible online. Users can explore the brains of humans and a variety of other species at an unprecedented level of detail, from a broad view of the brain to the fine details of nerves and connections. The website also includes a suite of free, downloadable tools for navigating and analyzing brain data.

"Many users have described it as a 'Google Maps' of the brain," said Shawn Mikula, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Davis who is first author on a paper describing the work.

The high-resolution maps will enable researchers to use "virtual microscopy" to compare healthy brains with others, looking at structure, gene expression and the distribution of different proteins. They will enable better understanding of the organization of normal brains, and could help researchers in identifying fine morphological and chemical abnormalities underlying Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurological diseases, Mikula said.

To make the maps, the researchers started with sections of brain mounted on microscope slides. Those slides were scanned to create image files or "virtual slides," and assembled like tiles into composite images. The maps have a resolution of better than half a micrometer per pixel, or 55,000 dots per inch, with virtual slides approaching 30 gigabytes in size each.

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Joao Setubal, Deputy Director of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute and one of the scientists on the project, commented "When the PAMGO project began, many GO terms existed for describing biological functions and processes found in microbes, but very few for describing the functions used by microbes in their associations with hosts."

Trudy Torto-Alalibo, PAMGO Project Coordinator, remarked: "The GO Consortium has been set up in a way that allows all users to actively contribute to the ongoing refinement of the terms. When a scientist submits a new term to PAMGO it enables the entire community to participate in synthesizing a common understanding of how microbes associate with hosts. This is a tremendous open-source resource and a powerful way to advance our understanding of host-pathogen relationships."

Michelle Gwinn-Giglio, Staff Scientist at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and a senior PAMGO member, remarked: "During the process of developing terms for PAMGO, it was immediately apparent that the mechanisms that microbes use to deal with hosts are really quite universal. The same terms can be used for species ranging from nematode worms to bacteria. Having these terms in place will greatly enhance research in this area."

In the current update, the PAMGO consortium, in collaboration with Jane Lomax and Amelia Ireland of the GO Consortium's editorial office at the European Bioinformatics Institute, has released more than 450 new terms for describing gene products involved in microbial-host interactions.

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