Bits, Brains and Behaviors The science - NeuronBank The history of the project What did we learn? Big Theme – Collaboration

******-informatics *****- omics

Common theme More than just store information Analysis - increase our understanding of biological processes Applying computationally intensive techniques (e.g., pattern recognition, data mining, machine learning algorithms, and visualization) to achieve this goal.pattern recognitiondata miningmachine learningvisualization Sequence alignment, gene finding, genome assembly, drug design, drug discovery, protein structure alignment, protein structure predictionSequence alignmentgene findinggenome assemblydrug designdrug discoveryprotein structure alignmentprotein structure prediction

Understanding the brain requires understanding its circuitry

Problem: We are using publications as a method to catalog neurons and neural circuits Information is distributed and fragmented. No means to efficiently search this knowledge. No means to publish incremental knowledge without a functional story.

Neuromics Genomics is the study of the Genome, where the Genome consists of all of the genes in an organism Neuromics is the study of the Neurome, where the Neurome consists of all of the neurons in an organism

The Neurome is harder to represent than the Genome. Neurons are identified based on their properties. –Idiosyncratic –Species-specific –Constantly evolving

The Neurome is harder to represent than the Genome. No standards for representing our knowledge of neural circuits. No means to database this knowledge

Our Approach Traditional databases are not a good fit - Changes in representation would cause the database schema to change Ontology: A formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts – A Vocabularydomain We created a core ontology that applies to all nervous systems We also support extensible species-specific ontologies.

NeuronBank is to neurons what GenBank is to genes. –A place to publish knowledge about neurons and neural connectivity –Tools to represent, search, analyze, and share knowledge of neurons and neural circuitry. –Collection of ontologies and tools to access them NeuronBank.org: A Neuromics Tool

DSI NeuronBank.org: A Neuromics Tool

DSI NeuronBank.org: A Neuromics Tool

Lesson 0: (Obvious) Cross-Disciplinary Challenges Different disciplines Different cultures/languages Reward: The satisfaction of working on real problems Key: Realistic expectations.

Lesson 1:Defining Requirements Requirements describe in detail what a software system is supposed to do Easier said than done The Myth of Stable Requirements –Specially true in a research project such as this –Give and take of size/scope through the funding process

Example: NeuroViz Moved from a 3D program to a 2D web browser based applet That:

Became this

NeuronBank v2.0 NeuronBank 1.0 achieved its objectives. First system to: –Support a varying data model for Species specific representation –While still allowing searches across species At the time of commencing work on v1.0 no clear standards existed for storing data as per our requirements

Problems with v1.0 Since v1.0 a lot of research has gone towards realizing the Semantic Web Extension to the WWW where the semantics of the information is defined We used a combination of technologies to build v1.0 This works… But: –Standards have now emerged for the Semantic Web (OWL) and Biological Ontologies (OBO). We need to conform to these. –Development Challenges. –Interface problems.

Lesson 2: Design for Change Need to design for change It’s the only thing that’s a given Projects should have the ability to evolve, discard and replace individual components with minimal impact on other pieces –Going from a stand alone 3-D Viz Tool to a browser based tool meant several changes for the branch –Moving to a Semantic Web version

Lesson 3: Community Building is hard A lot of excitement every time we pitch this to a group of researchers working on some species. But who will enter the data? 80/20 rule The system is only as good as what’s in it. Some sort of an incentive is needed to get new species started –Using NeuronBank wiki in classes –Then moving this data into NeuronBank Some visible advantage to using the system

Cerebral Ganglia

Lesson 4: Managing Humans Who owns this? –Code –Project/Sub-project Academic Attrition Publication potential to keep students interested –Ideally enough research for this to be the honors/thesis/dissertation topic for a student

Lesson 5: Institutional support Was this a good investment? $36, Seed Grant: $25, nd Seed Grant: $61,976 - Total initial investment by GSU $258,102 - Funded Grants (R21 grant) –(4x initial investment) $1,873,102 – NSF and NIH –(30x initial investment)

org.org Past Members Akshaye Dhawan (now at Ursinus College) Bob Calin-Jageman, (now at Dominican University) Jason Pamplin Hao Tian Hong Yang Hsui Wang Janaka Balasooriya Xiuyun Shen Wenjun Ma Piyaphol Phoungphol Naveen Hiremath Monika Patel Suzy Gentner Neuroscience Institute Paul Katz Computer Science Sushil Prasad, Ph.D. Ying Zhu, Ph.D. Raj Sunderraman, Ph.D. Students: Chad Frederick Weiling Li Rasanjalee Dissanayaka Mudiyanselage Shuman Gao

Thank You for your time and attention Questions?