The FaceBase Consortium A Reminder of Why We’re Here Steve Scholnick, PhD, Translational Genomics Research Branch NIDCR/NIH National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research

What is FaceBase? NIDCR-funded consortium of scientific teams collaboratively investigating craniofacial development and the disruption of those processes that result in craniofacial birth defects. Name of the database that will make the consortium’s data available to the wider scientific community.

Why create FaceBase? Two broad goals: Develop a comprehensive, systems-wide, understanding of the developmental processes that create the face during embryogenesis and how those processes go awry. High throughput genetic, molecular biological, imaging, and computational techniques Data integration from the above approaches Multidisciplinary approach Make large integrated datasets available to the wider scientific community to facilitate the design of new studies For example, 4D atlases of gene expression data Individual labs can mine these data for the background they need to pursue their own targeted work without doing the preliminaries themselves

FaceBase objectives (Now Future) Data Collection and Technology Development: “-omics” datasets on midface development at the molecular, cellular, tissue and organism levels deposited into FaceBase database Data Coordination, Integration and Sharing: Comparative analysis, gene regulatory networks, modeling Expansion of FaceBase organization to other craniofacial diseases and disorders: other craniofacial processes, cancer, Sjögren’s Syndrome, periodontal diseases, etc Translational and clinical applications for prevention & intervention