cg

annotate grant.html @ 94:e460569c21d4

.
author bshanks@bshanks-salk.dyndns.org
date Tue Apr 21 17:35:00 2009 -0700 (16 years ago)
parents 9f36acf8d9a8
children a25a60a4bf43

rev   line source
bshanks@0 1 Specific aims
bshanks@53 2 Massivenew datasets obtained with techniques such as in situ hybridization (ISH), immunohistochemistry, in situ transgenic
bshanks@53 3 reporter, microarray voxelation, and others, allow the expression levels of many genes at many locations to be compared.
bshanks@53 4 Our goal is to develop automated methods to relate spatial variation in gene expression to anatomy. We want to find marker
bshanks@53 5 genes for specific anatomical regions, and also to draw new anatomical maps based on gene expression patterns. We have
bshanks@53 6 three specific aims:
bshanks@30 7 (1) develop an algorithm to screen spatial gene expression data for combinations of marker genes which selectively target
bshanks@30 8 anatomical regions
bshanks@84 9 (2) develop an algorithm to suggest new ways of carving up a structure into anatomically distinct regions, based on
bshanks@84 10 spatial patterns in gene expression
bshanks@33 11 (3) create a 2-D “flat map” dataset of the mouse cerebral cortex that contains a flattened version of the Allen Mouse
bshanks@35 12 Brain Atlas ISH data, as well as the boundaries of cortical anatomical areas. This will involve extending the functionality of
bshanks@35 13 Caret, an existing open-source scientific imaging program. Use this dataset to validate the methods developed in (1) and (2).
bshanks@84 14 Although our particular application involves the 3D spatial distribution of gene expression, we anticipate that the methods
bshanks@84 15 developed in aims (1) and (2) will generalize to any sort of high-dimensional data over points located in a low-dimensional
bshanks@94 16 space. In particular, our method could be applied to genome-wide sequencing data derived from sets of tissues and disease
bshanks@94 17 states.
bshanks@84 18 In terms of the application of the methods to cerebral cortex, aim (1) is to go from cortical areas to marker genes,
bshanks@84 19 and aim (2) is to let the gene profile define the cortical areas. In addition to validating the usefulness of the algorithms,
bshanks@84 20 the application of these methods to cortex will produce immediate benefits, because there are currently no known genetic
bshanks@84 21 markers for most cortical areas. The results of the project will support the development of new ways to selectively target
bshanks@84 22 cortical areas, and it will support the development of a method for identifying the cortical areal boundaries present in small
bshanks@84 23 tissue samples.
bshanks@53 24 All algorithms that we develop will be implemented in a GPL open-source software toolkit. The toolkit, as well as the
bshanks@30 25 machine-readable datasets developed in aim (3), will be published and freely available for others to use.
bshanks@87 26 The challenge topic
bshanks@87 27 This proposal addresses challenge topic 06-HG-101. Massive new datasets obtained with techniques such as in situ hybridiza-
bshanks@87 28 tion (ISH), immunohistochemistry, in situ transgenic reporter, microarray voxelation, and others, allow the expression levels
bshanks@87 29 of many genes at many locations to be compared. Our goal is to develop automated methods to relate spatial variation in
bshanks@87 30 gene expression to anatomy. We want to find marker genes for specific anatomical regions, and also to draw new anatomical
bshanks@87 31 maps based on gene expression patterns.
bshanks@87 32 The Challenge and Potential impact
bshanks@94 33 Each of our three aims will be discussed in turn. For each aim, we will develop a conceptual framework for thinking about
bshanks@94 34 the task, and we will present our strategy for solving it. Next we will discuss related work. At the conclusion of each section,
bshanks@94 35 we will summarize why our strategy is different from what has been done before. At the end of this section, we will describe
bshanks@94 36 the potential impact.
bshanks@84 37 Aim 1: Given a map of regions, find genes that mark the regions
bshanks@94 38 Machine learning terminology: classifiers The task of looking for marker genes for known anatomical regions means
bshanks@94 39 that one is looking for a set of genes such that, if the expression level of those genes is known, then the locations of the
bshanks@94 40 regions can be inferred.
bshanks@94 41 If we define the regions so that they cover the entire anatomical structure to be subdivided, we may say that we are
bshanks@94 42 using gene expression in each voxel to assign that voxel to the proper area. We call this a classification task, because each
bshanks@94 43 voxel is being assigned to a class (namely, its region). An understanding of the relationship between the combination of
bshanks@94 44 their expression levels and the locations of the regions may be expressed as a function. The input to this function is a voxel,
bshanks@94 45 along with the gene expression levels within that voxel; the output is the regional identity of the target voxel, that is, the
bshanks@94 46 region to which the target voxel belongs. We call this function a classifier. In general, the input to a classifier is called an
bshanks@94 47 instance, and the output is called a label (or a class label).
bshanks@30 48 The object of aim 1 is not to produce a single classifier, but rather to develop an automated method for determining a
bshanks@30 49 classifier for any known anatomical structure. Therefore, we seek a procedure by which a gene expression dataset may be
bshanks@85 50 analyzed in concert with an anatomical atlas in order to produce a classifier. The initial gene expression dataset used in
bshanks@85 51 the construction of the classifier is called training data. In the machine learning literature, this sort of procedure may be
bshanks@85 52 thought of as a supervised learning task, defined as a task in which the goal is to learn a mapping from instances to labels,
bshanks@85 53 and the training data consists of a set of instances (voxels) for which the labels (regions) are known.
bshanks@30 54 Each gene expression level is called a feature, and the selection of which genes1 to include is called feature selection.
bshanks@33 55 Feature selection is one component of the task of learning a classifier. Some methods for learning classifiers start out with
bshanks@33 56 a separate feature selection phase, whereas other methods combine feature selection with other aspects of training.
bshanks@30 57 One class of feature selection methods assigns some sort of score to each candidate gene. The top-ranked genes are then
bshanks@30 58 chosen. Some scoring measures can assign a score to a set of selected genes, not just to a single gene; in this case, a dynamic
bshanks@30 59 procedure may be used in which features are added and subtracted from the selected set depending on how much they raise
bshanks@30 60 the score. Such procedures are called “stepwise” or “greedy”.
bshanks@30 61 Although the classifier itself may only look at the gene expression data within each voxel before classifying that voxel, the
bshanks@85 62 algorithm which constructs the classifier may look over the entire dataset. We can categorize score-based feature selection
bshanks@85 63 methods depending on how the score of calculated. Often the score calculation consists of assigning a sub-score to each voxel,
bshanks@85 64 and then aggregating these sub-scores into a final score (the aggregation is often a sum or a sum of squares or average). If
bshanks@85 65 only information from nearby voxels is used to calculate a voxel’s sub-score, then we say it is a local scoring method. If only
bshanks@85 66 information from the voxel itself is used to calculate a voxel’s sub-score, then we say it is a pointwise scoring method.
bshanks@94 67 Both gene expression data and anatomical atlases have errors, due to a variety of factors. Individual subjects have
bshanks@94 68 idiosyncratic anatomy. Subjects may be improperly registred to the atlas. The method used to measure gene expression
bshanks@94 69 may be noisy. The atlas may have errors. It is even possible that some areas in the anatomical atlas are “wrong” in that
bshanks@94 70 they do not have the same shape as the natural domains of gene expression to which they correspond. These sources of error
bshanks@94 71 can affect the displacement and the shape of both the gene expression data and the anatomical target areas. Therefore, it
bshanks@94 72 is important to use feature selection methods which are robust to these kinds of errors.
bshanks@85 73 Our strategy for Aim 1
bshanks@85 74 Key questions when choosing a learning method are: What are the instances? What are the features? How are the features
bshanks@85 75 chosen? Here are four principles that outline our answers to these questions.
bshanks@94 76 _________________________________________
bshanks@94 77 1Strictly speaking, the features are gene expression levels, but we’ll call them genes.
bshanks@84 78 Principle 1: Combinatorial gene expression
bshanks@94 79 It istoo much to hope that every anatomical region of interest will be identified by a single gene. For example, in the
bshanks@84 80 cortex, there are some areas which are not clearly delineated by any gene included in the Allen Brain Atlas (ABA) dataset.
bshanks@84 81 However, at least some of these areas can be delineated by looking at combinations of genes (an example of an area for
bshanks@84 82 which multiple genes are necessary and sufficient is provided in Preliminary Studies, Figure 4). Therefore, each instance
bshanks@84 83 should contain multiple features (genes).
bshanks@84 84 Principle 2: Only look at combinations of small numbers of genes
bshanks@84 85 When the classifier classifies a voxel, it is only allowed to look at the expression of the genes which have been selected
bshanks@84 86 as features. The more data that are available to a classifier, the better that it can do. For example, perhaps there are weak
bshanks@84 87 correlations over many genes that add up to a strong signal. So, why not include every gene as a feature? The reason is that
bshanks@84 88 we wish to employ the classifier in situations in which it is not feasible to gather data about every gene. For example, if we
bshanks@84 89 want to use the expression of marker genes as a trigger for some regionally-targeted intervention, then our intervention must
bshanks@84 90 contain a molecular mechanism to check the expression level of each marker gene before it triggers. It is currently infeasible
bshanks@84 91 to design a molecular trigger that checks the level of more than a handful of genes. Similarly, if the goal is to develop a
bshanks@84 92 procedure to do ISH on tissue samples in order to label their anatomy, then it is infeasible to label more than a few genes.
bshanks@84 93 Therefore, we must select only a few genes as features.
bshanks@63 94 The requirement to find combinations of only a small number of genes limits us from straightforwardly applying many
bshanks@63 95 of the most simple techniques from the field of supervised machine learning. In the parlance of machine learning, our task
bshanks@63 96 combines feature selection with supervised learning.
bshanks@30 97 Principle 3: Use geometry in feature selection
bshanks@30 98 When doing feature selection with score-based methods, the simplest thing to do would be to score the performance of
bshanks@30 99 each voxel by itself and then combine these scores (pointwise scoring). A more powerful approach is to also use information
bshanks@30 100 about the geometric relations between each voxel and its neighbors; this requires non-pointwise, local scoring methods. See
bshanks@84 101 Preliminary Studies, figure 3 for evidence of the complementary nature of pointwise and local scoring methods.
bshanks@30 102 Principle 4: Work in 2-D whenever possible
bshanks@30 103 There are many anatomical structures which are commonly characterized in terms of a two-dimensional manifold. When
bshanks@30 104 it is known that the structure that one is looking for is two-dimensional, the results may be improved by allowing the analysis
bshanks@33 105 algorithm to take advantage of this prior knowledge. In addition, it is easier for humans to visualize and work with 2-D
bshanks@85 106 data. Therefore, when possible, the instances should represent pixels, not voxels.
bshanks@43 107 Related work
bshanks@44 108 There is a substantial body of work on the analysis of gene expression data, most of this concerns gene expression data
bshanks@84 109 which are not fundamentally spatial2.
bshanks@43 110 As noted above, there has been much work on both supervised learning and there are many available algorithms for
bshanks@43 111 each. However, the algorithms require the scientist to provide a framework for representing the problem domain, and the
bshanks@43 112 way that this framework is set up has a large impact on performance. Creating a good framework can require creatively
bshanks@43 113 reconceptualizing the problem domain, and is not merely a mechanical “fine-tuning” of numerical parameters. For example,
bshanks@84 114 we believe that domain-specific scoring measures (such as gradient similarity, which is discussed in Preliminary Studies) may
bshanks@43 115 be necessary in order to achieve the best results in this application.
bshanks@53 116 We are aware of six existing efforts to find marker genes using spatial gene expression data using automated methods.
bshanks@94 117 [12 ] mentions the possibility of constructing a spatial region for each gene, and then, for each anatomical structure of
bshanks@53 118 interest, computing what proportion of this structure is covered by the gene’s spatial region.
bshanks@94 119 GeneAtlas[5] and EMAGE [25] allow the user to construct a search query by demarcating regions and then specifing
bshanks@53 120 either the strength of expression or the name of another gene or dataset whose expression pattern is to be matched. For the
bshanks@53 121 similiarity score (match score) between two images (in this case, the query and the gene expression images), GeneAtlas uses
bshanks@53 122 the sum of a weighted L1-norm distance between vectors whose components represent the number of cells within a pixel3
bshanks@85 123 whose expression is within four discretization levels. EMAGE uses Jaccard similarity4. Neither GeneAtlas nor EMAGE
bshanks@53 124 allow one to search for combinations of genes that define a region in concert but not separately.
bshanks@94 125 [14 ] describes AGEA, ”Anatomic Gene Expression Atlas”. AGEA has three components. Gene Finder: The user
bshanks@85 126 selects a seed voxel and the system (1) chooses a cluster which includes the seed voxel, (2) yields a list of genes which are
bshanks@85 127 overexpressed in that cluster. (note: the ABA website also contains pre-prepared lists of overexpressed genes for selected
bshanks@85 128 structures). Correlation: The user selects a seed voxel and the system then shows the user how much correlation there is
bshanks@85 129 between the gene expression profile of the seed voxel and every other voxel. Clusters: will be described later
bshanks@94 130 _________________________________________
bshanks@94 131 2By “fundamentally spatial” we mean that there is information from a large number of spatial locations indexed by spatial coordinates; not
bshanks@94 132 just data which have only a few different locations or which is indexed by anatomical label.
bshanks@94 133 3Actually, many of these projects use quadrilaterals instead of square pixels; but we will refer to them as pixels for simplicity.
bshanks@94 134 4the number of true pixels in the intersection of the two images, divided by the number of pixels in their union.
bshanks@43 135 Gene Finder is different from our Aim 1 in at least three ways. First, Gene Finder finds only single genes, whereas we
bshanks@43 136 will also look for combinations of genes. Second, gene finder can only use overexpression as a marker, whereas we will also
bshanks@85 137 search for underexpression. Third, Gene Finder uses a simple pointwise score5, whereas we will also use geometric scores
bshanks@84 138 such as gradient similarity (described in Preliminary Studies). Figures 4, 2, and 3 in the Preliminary Studies section contains
bshanks@84 139 evidence that each of our three choices is the right one.
bshanks@85 140 [6 ] looks at the mean expression level of genes within anatomical regions, and applies a Student’s t-test with Bonferroni
bshanks@51 141 correction to determine whether the mean expression level of a gene is significantly higher in the target region. Like AGEA,
bshanks@51 142 this is a pointwise measure (only the mean expression level per pixel is being analyzed), it is not being used to look for
bshanks@51 143 underexpression, and does not look for combinations of genes.
bshanks@94 144 [10 ] describes a technique to find combinations of marker genes to pick out an anatomical region. They use an evolutionary
bshanks@46 145 algorithm to evolve logical operators which combine boolean (thresholded) images in order to match a target image. Their
bshanks@51 146 match score is Jaccard similarity.
bshanks@84 147 In summary, there has been fruitful work on finding marker genes, but only one of the previous projects explores
bshanks@51 148 combinations of marker genes, and none of these publications compare the results obtained by using different algorithms or
bshanks@51 149 scoring methods.
bshanks@84 150 Aim 2: From gene expression data, discover a map of regions
bshanks@30 151 Machine learning terminology: clustering
bshanks@30 152 If one is given a dataset consisting merely of instances, with no class labels, then analysis of the dataset is referred to as
bshanks@30 153 unsupervised learning in the jargon of machine learning. One thing that you can do with such a dataset is to group instances
bshanks@46 154 together. A set of similar instances is called a cluster, and the activity of finding grouping the data into clusters is called
bshanks@46 155 clustering or cluster analysis.
bshanks@84 156 The task of deciding how to carve up a structure into anatomical regions can be put into these terms. The instances
bshanks@84 157 are once again voxels (or pixels) along with their associated gene expression profiles. We make the assumption that voxels
bshanks@84 158 from the same anatomical region have similar gene expression profiles, at least compared to the other regions. This means
bshanks@84 159 that clustering voxels is the same as finding potential regions; we seek a partitioning of the voxels into regions, that is, into
bshanks@84 160 clusters of voxels with similar gene expression.
bshanks@85 161 It is desirable to determine not just one set of regions, but also how these regions relate to each other. The outcome of
bshanks@85 162 clustering may be a hierarchial tree of clusters, rather than a single set of clusters which partition the voxels. This is called
bshanks@85 163 hierarchial clustering.
bshanks@85 164 Similarity scores A crucial choice when designing a clustering method is how to measure similarity, across either pairs
bshanks@85 165 of instances, or clusters, or both. There is much overlap between scoring methods for feature selection (discussed above
bshanks@85 166 under Aim 1) and scoring methods for similarity.
bshanks@85 167 Spatially contiguous clusters; image segmentation We have shown that aim 2 is a type of clustering task. In fact,
bshanks@85 168 it is a special type of clustering task because we have an additional constraint on clusters; voxels grouped together into a
bshanks@85 169 cluster must be spatially contiguous. In Preliminary Studies, we show that one can get reasonable results without enforcing
bshanks@85 170 this constraint; however, we plan to compare these results against other methods which guarantee contiguous clusters.
bshanks@85 171 Image segmentation is the task of partitioning the pixels in a digital image into clusters, usually contiguous clusters. Aim
bshanks@85 172 2 is similar to an image segmentation task. There are two main differences; in our task, there are thousands of color channels
bshanks@85 173 (one for each gene), rather than just three6. A more crucial difference is that there are various cues which are appropriate
bshanks@85 174 for detecting sharp object boundaries in a visual scene but which are not appropriate for segmenting abstract spatial data
bshanks@85 175 such as gene expression. Although many image segmentation algorithms can be expected to work well for segmenting other
bshanks@85 176 sorts of spatially arranged data, some of these algorithms are specialized for visual images.
bshanks@51 177 Dimensionality reduction In this section, we discuss reducing the length of the per-pixel gene expression feature
bshanks@51 178 vector. By “dimension”, we mean the dimension of this vector, not the spatial dimension of the underlying data.
bshanks@33 179 Unlike aim 1, there is no externally-imposed need to select only a handful of informative genes for inclusion in the
bshanks@85 180 instances. However, some clustering algorithms perform better on small numbers of features7. There are techniques which
bshanks@30 181 “summarize” a larger number of features using a smaller number of features; these techniques go by the name of feature
bshanks@30 182 extraction or dimensionality reduction. The small set of features that such a technique yields is called the reduced feature
bshanks@85 183 set. Note that the features in the reduced feature set do not necessarily correspond to genes; each feature in the reduced set
bshanks@85 184 may be any function of the set of gene expression levels.
bshanks@94 185 _________________________________________
bshanks@94 186 5“Expression energy ratio”, which captures overexpression.
bshanks@94 187 6There are imaging tasks which use more than three colors, for example multispectral imaging and hyperspectral imaging, which are often
bshanks@94 188 used to process satellite imagery.
bshanks@94 189 7First, because the number of features in the reduced dataset is less than in the original dataset, the running time of clustering algorithms
bshanks@94 190 may be much less. Second, it is thought that some clustering algorithms may give better results on reduced data.
bshanks@85 191 Clustering genes rather than voxels Although the ultimate goal is to cluster the instances (voxels or pixels), one
bshanks@85 192 strategy to achieve this goal is to first cluster the features (genes). There are two ways that clusters of genes could be used.
bshanks@30 193 Gene clusters could be used as part of dimensionality reduction: rather than have one feature for each gene, we could
bshanks@30 194 have one reduced feature for each gene cluster.
bshanks@30 195 Gene clusters could also be used to directly yield a clustering on instances. This is because many genes have an expression
bshanks@94 196 pattern which seems to pick out a single, spatially continguous region. Therefore, it seems likely that an anatomically
bshanks@85 197 interesting region will have multiple genes which each individually pick it out8. This suggests the following procedure:
bshanks@42 198 cluster together genes which pick out similar regions, and then to use the more popular common regions as the final clusters.
bshanks@84 199 In Preliminary Studies, Figure 7, we show that a number of anatomically recognized cortical regions, as well as some
bshanks@84 200 “superregions” formed by lumping together a few regions, are associated with gene clusters in this fashion.
bshanks@51 201 The task of clustering both the instances and the features is called co-clustering, and there are a number of co-clustering
bshanks@51 202 algorithms.
bshanks@43 203 Related work
bshanks@94 204 Some researchers have attempted to parcellate cortex on the basis of non-gene expression data. For example, [17], [2], [18],
bshanks@94 205 and [1 ] associate spots on the cortex with the radial profile9 of response to some stain ([11] uses MRI), extract features from
bshanks@85 206 this profile, and then use similarity between surface pixels to cluster. Features used include statistical moments, wavelets,
bshanks@85 207 and the excess mass functional. Some of these features are motivated by the presence of tangential lines of stain intensity
bshanks@85 208 which correspond to laminar structure. Some methods use standard clustering procedures, whereas others make use of the
bshanks@85 209 spatial nature of the data to look for sudden transitions, which are identified as areal borders.
bshanks@94 210 [22 ] describes an analysis of the anatomy of the hippocampus using the ABA dataset. In addition to manual analysis,
bshanks@43 211 two clustering methods were employed, a modified Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF), and a hierarchial recursive
bshanks@44 212 bifurcation clustering scheme based on correlation as the similarity score. The paper yielded impressive results, proving
bshanks@85 213 the usefulness of computational genomic anatomy. We have run NNMF on the cortical dataset10 and while the results are
bshanks@84 214 promising, they also demonstrate that NNMF is not necessarily the best dimensionality reduction method for this application
bshanks@84 215 (see Preliminary Studies, Figure 6).
bshanks@94 216 AGEA[14] includes a preset hierarchial clustering of voxels based on a recursive bifurcation algorithm with correlation
bshanks@94 217 as the similarity metric. EMAGE[25] allows the user to select a dataset from among a large number of alternatives, or by
bshanks@53 218 running a search query, and then to cluster the genes within that dataset. EMAGE clusters via hierarchial complete linkage
bshanks@53 219 clustering with un-centred correlation as the similarity score.
bshanks@85 220 [6 ] clustered genes, starting out by selecting 135 genes out of 20,000 which had high variance over voxels and which were
bshanks@53 221 highly correlated with many other genes. They computed the matrix of (rank) correlations between pairs of these genes, and
bshanks@53 222 ordered the rows of this matrix as follows: “the first row of the matrix was chosen to show the strongest contrast between
bshanks@53 223 the highest and lowest correlation coefficient for that row. The remaining rows were then arranged in order of decreasing
bshanks@53 224 similarity using a least squares metric”. The resulting matrix showed four clusters. For each cluster, prototypical spatial
bshanks@53 225 expression patterns were created by averaging the genes in the cluster. The prototypes were analyzed manually, without
bshanks@85 226 clustering voxels.
bshanks@94 227 [10 ] applies their technique for finding combinations of marker genes for the purpose of clustering genes around a “seed
bshanks@85 228 gene”. They do this by using the pattern of expression of the seed gene as the target image, and then searching for other
bshanks@85 229 genes which can be combined to reproduce this pattern. Other genes which are found are considered to be related to the
bshanks@94 230 seed. The same team also describes a method[24] for finding “association rules” such as, “if this voxel is expressed in by
bshanks@85 231 any gene, then that voxel is probably also expressed in by the same gene”. This could be useful as part of a procedure for
bshanks@85 232 clustering voxels.
bshanks@46 233 In summary, although these projects obtained clusterings, there has not been much comparison between different algo-
bshanks@85 234 rithms or scoring methods, so it is likely that the best clustering method for this application has not yet been found. The
bshanks@85 235 projects using gene expression on cortex did not attempt to make use of the radial profile of gene expression. Also, none of
bshanks@85 236 these projects did a separate dimensionality reduction step before clustering pixels, none tried to cluster genes first in order
bshanks@85 237 to guide automated clustering of pixels into spatial regions, and none used co-clustering algorithms.
bshanks@87 238 _________________________________________
bshanks@87 239 8This would seem to contradict our finding in aim 1 that some cortical areas are combinatorially coded by multiple genes. However, it is
bshanks@87 240 possible that the currently accepted cortical maps divide the cortex into regions which are unnatural from the point of view of gene expression;
bshanks@87 241 perhaps there is some other way to map the cortex for which each region can be identified by single genes. Another possibility is that, although
bshanks@87 242 the cluster prototype fits an anatomical region, the individual genes are each somewhat different from the prototype.
bshanks@87 243 9A radial profile is a profile along a line perpendicular to the cortical surface.
bshanks@87 244 10We ran “vanilla” NNMF, whereas the paper under discussion used a modified method. Their main modification consisted of adding a soft
bshanks@87 245 spatial contiguity constraint. However, on our dataset, NNMF naturally produced spatially contiguous clusters, so no additional constraint was
bshanks@87 246 needed. The paper under discussion also mentions that they tried a hierarchial variant of NNMF, which we have not yet tried.
bshanks@94 247 Aim 3: apply the methods developed to the cerebral cortex
bshanks@94 248 Background
bshanks@94 249 The cortex is divided into areas and layers. Because of the cortical columnar organization, the parcellation of the cortex
bshanks@94 250 into areas can be drawn as a 2-D map on the surface of the cortex. In the third dimension, the boundaries between the
bshanks@84 251 areas continue downwards into the cortical depth, perpendicular to the surface. The layer boundaries run parallel to the
bshanks@94 252 surface. One can picture an area of the cortex as a slice of a six-layered cake11.
bshanks@85 253 It is known that different cortical areas have distinct roles in both normal functioning and in disease processes, yet there
bshanks@85 254 are no known marker genes for most cortical areas. When it is necessary to divide a tissue sample into cortical areas, this is
bshanks@85 255 a manual process that requires a skilled human to combine multiple visual cues and interpret them in the context of their
bshanks@85 256 approximate location upon the cortical surface.
bshanks@33 257 Even the questions of how many areas should be recognized in cortex, and what their arrangement is, are still not
bshanks@53 258 completely settled. A proposed division of the cortex into areas is called a cortical map. In the rodent, the lack of a single
bshanks@94 259 agreed-upon map can be seen by contrasting the recent maps given by Swanson[21] on the one hand, and Paxinos and
bshanks@94 260 Franklin[16] on the other. While the maps are certainly very similar in their general arrangement, significant differences
bshanks@85 261 remain.
bshanks@36 262 The Allen Mouse Brain Atlas dataset
bshanks@84 263 The Allen Mouse Brain Atlas (ABA) data were produced by doing in-situ hybridization on slices of male, 56-day-old
bshanks@36 264 C57BL/6J mouse brains. Pictures were taken of the processed slice, and these pictures were semi-automatically analyzed
bshanks@85 265 to create a digital measurement of gene expression levels at each location in each slice. Per slice, cellular spatial resolution
bshanks@85 266 is achieved. Using this method, a single physical slice can only be used to measure one single gene; many different mouse
bshanks@85 267 brains were needed in order to measure the expression of many genes.
bshanks@85 268 An automated nonlinear alignment procedure located the 2D data from the various slices in a single 3D coordinate
bshanks@36 269 system. In the final 3D coordinate system, voxels are cubes with 200 microns on a side. There are 67x41x58 = 159,326
bshanks@94 270 voxels in the 3D coordinate system, of which 51,533 are in the brain[14].
bshanks@94 271 Mus musculus is thought to contain about 22,000 protein-coding genes[27]. The ABA contains data on about 20,000
bshanks@85 272 genes in sagittal sections, out of which over 4,000 genes are also measured in coronal sections. Our dataset is derived from
bshanks@85 273 only the coronal subset of the ABA12.
bshanks@85 274 The ABA is not the only large public spatial gene expression dataset13. With the exception of the ABA, GenePaint, and
bshanks@85 275 EMAGE, most of the other resources have not (yet) extracted the expression intensity from the ISH images and registered
bshanks@85 276 the results into a single 3-D space, and to our knowledge only ABA and EMAGE make this form of data available for public
bshanks@85 277 download from the website14. Many of these resources focus on developmental gene expression.
bshanks@63 278 Related work
bshanks@94 279 [14 ] describes the application of AGEA to the cortex. The paper describes interesting results on the structure of correlations
bshanks@63 280 between voxel gene expression profiles within a handful of cortical areas. However, this sort of analysis is not related to either
bshanks@46 281 of our aims, as it neither finds marker genes, nor does it suggest a cortical map based on gene expression data. Neither of
bshanks@46 282 the other components of AGEA can be applied to cortical areas; AGEA’s Gene Finder cannot be used to find marker genes
bshanks@85 283 for the cortical areas; and AGEA’s hierarchial clustering does not produce clusters corresponding to the cortical areas15.
bshanks@46 284 In summary, for all three aims, (a) only one of the previous projects explores combinations of marker genes, (b) there has
bshanks@43 285 been almost no comparison of different algorithms or scoring methods, and (c) there has been no work on computationally
bshanks@43 286 finding marker genes for cortical areas, or on finding a hierarchial clustering that will yield a map of cortical areas de novo
bshanks@43 287 from gene expression data.
bshanks@94 288 ___________________
bshanks@94 289 11Outside of isocortex, the number of layers varies.
bshanks@94 290 12The sagittal data do not cover the entire cortex, and also have greater registration error[14]. Genes were selected by the Allen Institute for
bshanks@85 291 coronal sectioning based on, “classes of known neuroscientific interest... or through post hoc identification of a marked non-ubiquitous expression
bshanks@94 292 pattern”[14].
bshanks@94 293 13Other such resources include GENSAT[8], GenePaint[26], its sister project GeneAtlas[5], BGEM[13], EMAGE[25], EurExpress (http:
bshanks@94 294 //www.eurexpress.org/ee/; EurExpress data are also entered into EMAGE), EADHB (http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ihg/EADHB/database/$EADHB_
bshanks@94 295 {database}$.html), MAMEP (http://mamep.molgen.mpg.de/index.php), Xenbase (http://xenbase.org/), ZFIN[20], Aniseed (http://
bshanks@94 296 aniseed-ibdm.univ-mrs.fr/), VisiGene (http://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgVisiGene ; includes data from some of the other listed data
bshanks@94 297 sources), GEISHA[4], Fruitfly.org[23], COMPARE (http://compare.ibdml.univ-mrs.fr/), GXD[19], GEO[3] (GXD and GEO contain spatial
bshanks@94 298 data but also non-spatial data. All GXD spatial data are also in EMAGE.)
bshanks@85 299 14without prior offline registration
bshanks@85 300 15In both cases, the cause is that pairwise correlations between the gene expression of voxels in different areas but the same layer are often stronger
bshanks@85 301 than pairwise correlations between the gene expression of voxels in different layers but the same area. Therefore, a pairwise voxel correlation
bshanks@85 302 clustering algorithm will tend to create clusters representing cortical layers, not areas (there may be clusters which presumably correspond to the
bshanks@85 303 intersection of a layer and an area, but since one area will have many layer-area intersection clusters, further work is needed to make sense of
bshanks@85 304 these). The reason that Gene Finder cannot the find marker genes for cortical areas is that, although the user chooses a seed voxel, Gene Finder
bshanks@85 305 chooses the ROI for which genes will be found, and it creates that ROI by (pairwise voxel correlation) clustering around the seed.
bshanks@94 306 Our project is guided by a concrete application with a well-specified criterion of success (how well we can find marker
bshanks@94 307 genes for / reproduce the layout of cortical areas), which will provide a solid basis for comparing different methods.
bshanks@94 308 Significance
bshanks@85 309
bshanks@85 310
bshanks@85 311 Figure 1: Top row: Genes Nfic and
bshanks@85 312 A930001M12Rik are the most correlated
bshanks@85 313 with area SS (somatosensory cortex). Bot-
bshanks@85 314 tom row: Genes C130038G02Rik and
bshanks@85 315 Cacna1i are those with the best fit using
bshanks@85 316 logistic regression. Within each picture, the
bshanks@85 317 vertical axis roughly corresponds to anterior
bshanks@85 318 at the top and posterior at the bottom, and
bshanks@85 319 the horizontal axis roughly corresponds to
bshanks@85 320 medial at the left and lateral at the right.
bshanks@85 321 The red outline is the boundary of region
bshanks@85 322 SS. Pixels are colored according to correla-
bshanks@85 323 tion, with red meaning high correlation and
bshanks@93 324 blue meaning low. The method developed in aim (1) will be applied to each cortical area to find
bshanks@93 325 a set of marker genes such that the combinatorial expression pattern of those
bshanks@93 326 genes uniquely picks out the target area. Finding marker genes will be useful
bshanks@93 327 for drug discovery as well as for experimentation because marker genes can be
bshanks@93 328 used to design interventions which selectively target individual cortical areas.
bshanks@93 329 The application of the marker gene finding algorithm to the cortex will
bshanks@93 330 also support the development of new neuroanatomical methods. In addition
bshanks@93 331 to finding markers for each individual cortical areas, we will find a small panel
bshanks@93 332 of genes that can find many of the areal boundaries at once. This panel of
bshanks@93 333 marker genes will allow the development of an ISH protocol that will allow
bshanks@93 334 experimenters to more easily identify which anatomical areas are present in
bshanks@93 335 small samples of cortex.
bshanks@93 336 The method developed in aim (2) will provide a genoarchitectonic viewpoint
bshanks@93 337 that will contribute to the creation of a better map. The development of
bshanks@93 338 present-day cortical maps was driven by the application of histological stains.
bshanks@93 339 If a different set of stains had been available which identified a different set of
bshanks@93 340 features, then today’s cortical maps may have come out differently. It is likely
bshanks@93 341 that there are many repeated, salient spatial patterns in the gene expression
bshanks@93 342 which have not yet been captured by any stain. Therefore, cortical anatomy
bshanks@93 343 needs to incorporate what we can learn from looking at the patterns of gene
bshanks@93 344 expression.
bshanks@93 345 While we do not here propose to analyze human gene expression data, it is
bshanks@93 346 conceivable that the methods we propose to develop could be used to suggest
bshanks@94 347 modifications to the human cortical map as well. In fact, the methods we will
bshanks@94 348 develop will be applicable to other datasets beyond the brain. We will provide
bshanks@94 349 an open-source toolbox to allow other researchers to easily use our methods.
bshanks@94 350 With these methods, researchers with gene expression for any area of the body
bshanks@94 351 will be able to efficiently find marker genes for anatomical regions, or to use
bshanks@94 352 gene expression to discover new anatomical patterning. As described above,
bshanks@94 353 marker genes have a variety of uses in the development of drugs and experimental manipulations, and in the anatomical
bshanks@94 354 characterization of tissue samples. The discovery of new ways to carve up anatomical structures into regions may lead to
bshanks@94 355 the discovery of new anatomical subregions in various structures, which will widely impact all areas of biology.
bshanks@75 356
bshanks@78 357 Figure 2: Gene Pitx2
bshanks@75 358 is selectively underex-
bshanks@93 359 pressed in area SS. Although our particular application involves the 3D spatial distribution of gene expression, we
bshanks@93 360 anticipate that the methods developed in aims (1) and (2) will not be limited to gene expression
bshanks@93 361 data, but rather will generalize to any sort of high-dimensional data over points located in a
bshanks@93 362 low-dimensional space.
bshanks@93 363 The approach: Preliminary Studies
bshanks@93 364 Format conversion between SEV, MATLAB, NIFTI
bshanks@93 365 We have created software to (politely) download all of the SEV files16 from the Allen Institute
bshanks@93 366 website. We have also created software to convert between the SEV, MATLAB, and NIFTI file
bshanks@93 367 formats, as well as some of Caret’s file formats.
bshanks@93 368 Flatmap of cortex
bshanks@93 369 We downloaded the ABA data and applied a mask to select only those voxels which belong to
bshanks@93 370 cerebral cortex. We divided the cortex into hemispheres.
bshanks@94 371 Using Caret[7], we created a mesh representation of the surface of the selected voxels. For each gene, and for each node
bshanks@94 372 of the mesh, we calculated an average of the gene expression of the voxels “underneath” that mesh node. We then flattened
bshanks@93 373 the cortex, creating a two-dimensional mesh.
bshanks@94 374 ____
bshanks@93 375 16SEV is a sparse format for spatial data. It is the format in which the ABA data is made available.
bshanks@94 376
bshanks@85 377
bshanks@85 378
bshanks@85 379 Figure 3: The top row shows the two genes
bshanks@85 380 which (individually) best predict area AUD,
bshanks@85 381 according to logistic regression. The bot-
bshanks@85 382 tom row shows the two genes which (indi-
bshanks@85 383 vidually) best match area AUD, according
bshanks@85 384 to gradient similarity. From left to right and
bshanks@85 385 top to bottom, the genes are Ssr1, Efcbp1,
bshanks@94 386 Ptk7, and Aph1a. We sampled the nodes of the irregular, flat mesh in order to create a regular
bshanks@94 387 grid of pixel values. We converted this grid into a MATLAB matrix.
bshanks@94 388 We manually traced the boundaries of each of 49 cortical areas from the
bshanks@94 389 ABA coronal reference atlas slides. We then converted these manual traces
bshanks@94 390 into Caret-format regional boundary data on the mesh surface. We projected
bshanks@94 391 the regions onto the 2-d mesh, and then onto the grid, and then we converted
bshanks@94 392 the region data into MATLAB format.
bshanks@94 393 At this point, the data are in the form of a number of 2-D matrices, all in
bshanks@94 394 registration, with the matrix entries representing a grid of points (pixels) over
bshanks@94 395 the cortical surface:
bshanks@94 396 ∙ A 2-D matrix whose entries represent the regional label associated with
bshanks@94 397 each surface pixel
bshanks@94 398 ∙ For each gene, a 2-D matrix whose entries represent the average expres-
bshanks@94 399 sion level underneath each surface pixel
bshanks@94 400 We created a normalized version of the gene expression data by subtracting
bshanks@93 401 each gene’s mean expression level (over all surface pixels) and dividing the
bshanks@93 402 expression level of each gene by its standard deviation.
bshanks@93 403 The features and the target area are both functions on the surface pix-
bshanks@93 404 els. They can be referred to as scalar fields over the space of surface pixels;
bshanks@93 405 alternately, they can be thought of as images which can be displayed on the
bshanks@93 406 flatmapped surface.
bshanks@93 407 To move beyond a single average expression level for each surface pixel, we
bshanks@94 408 plan to create a separate matrix for each cortical layer to represent the average expression level within that layer. Cortical
bshanks@94 409 layers are found at different depths in different parts of the cortex. In preparation for extracting the layer-specific datasets,
bshanks@94 410 we have extended Caret with routines that allow the depth of the ROI for volume-to-surface projection to vary.
bshanks@94 411 In the Research Plan, we describe how we will automatically locate the layer depths. For validation, we have manually
bshanks@94 412 demarcated the depth of the outer boundary of cortical layer 5 throughout the cortex.
bshanks@94 413 Feature selection and scoring methods
bshanks@94 414 Underexpression of a gene can serve as a marker Underexpression of a gene can sometimes serve as a marker. See,
bshanks@94 415 for example, Figure 2.
bshanks@93 416
bshanks@93 417
bshanks@93 418 Figure 4: Upper left: wwc1. Upper right:
bshanks@93 419 mtif2. Lower left: wwc1 + mtif2 (each
bshanks@93 420 pixel’s value on the lower left is the sum of
bshanks@94 421 the corresponding pixels in the upper row). Correlation Recall that the instances are surface pixels, and consider the
bshanks@94 422 problem of attempting to classify each instance as either a member of a partic-
bshanks@94 423 ular anatomical area, or not. The target area can be represented as a boolean
bshanks@94 424 mask over the surface pixels.
bshanks@94 425 One class of feature selection scoring methods contains methods which cal-
bshanks@94 426 culate some sort of “match” between each gene image and the target image.
bshanks@94 427 Those genes which match the best are good candidates for features.
bshanks@94 428 One of the simplest methods in this class is to use correlation as the match
bshanks@94 429 score. We calculated the correlation between each gene and each cortical area.
bshanks@94 430 The top row of Figure 1 shows the three genes most correlated with area SS.
bshanks@94 431 Conditional entropy An information-theoretic scoring method is to find
bshanks@85 432 features such that, if the features (gene expression levels) are known, uncer-
bshanks@85 433 tainty about the target (the regional identity) is reduced. Entropy measures
bshanks@85 434 uncertainty, so what we want is to find features such that the conditional dis-
bshanks@85 435 tribution of the target has minimal entropy. The distribution to which we are
bshanks@85 436 referring is the probability distribution over the population of surface pixels.
bshanks@85 437 The simplest way to use information theory is on discrete data, so we
bshanks@85 438 discretized our gene expression data by creating, for each gene, five thresholded
bshanks@94 439 boolean masks of the gene data. For each gene, we created a boolean mask
bshanks@94 440 of its expression levels using each of these thresholds: the mean of that gene, the mean minus one standard deviation, the
bshanks@94 441 mean minus two standard deviations, the mean plus one standard deviation, the mean plus two standard deviations.
bshanks@94 442 Now, for each region, we created and ran a forward stepwise procedure which attempted to find pairs of gene expression
bshanks@94 443 boolean masks such that the conditional entropy of the target area’s boolean mask, conditioned upon the pair of gene
bshanks@94 444 expression boolean masks, is minimized.
bshanks@94 445 This finds pairs of genes which are most informative (at least at these discretization thresholds) relative to the question,
bshanks@94 446 “Is this surface pixel a member of the target area?”. Its advantage over linear methods such as logistic regression is that it
bshanks@94 447 takes account of arbitrarily nonlinear relationships; for example, if the XOR of two variables predicts the target, conditional
bshanks@94 448 entropy would notice, whereas linear methods would not.
bshanks@85 449
bshanks@85 450
bshanks@85 451
bshanks@85 452
bshanks@85 453 Figure 5: From left to right and top
bshanks@85 454 to bottom, single genes which roughly
bshanks@85 455 identify areas SS (somatosensory primary
bshanks@85 456 + supplemental), SSs (supplemental so-
bshanks@85 457 matosensory), PIR (piriform), FRP (frontal
bshanks@85 458 pole), RSP (retrosplenial), COApm (Corti-
bshanks@85 459 cal amygdalar, posterior part, medial zone).
bshanks@85 460 Grouping some areas together, we have
bshanks@85 461 also found genes to identify the groups
bshanks@85 462 ACA+PL+ILA+DP+ORB+MO (anterior
bshanks@85 463 cingulate, prelimbic, infralimbic, dorsal pe-
bshanks@85 464 duncular, orbital, motor), posterior and lat-
bshanks@85 465 eral visual (VISpm, VISpl, VISI, VISp; pos-
bshanks@85 466 teromedial, posterolateral, lateral, and pri-
bshanks@85 467 mary visual; the posterior and lateral vi-
bshanks@85 468 sual area is distinguished from its neigh-
bshanks@85 469 bors, but not from the entire rest of the
bshanks@85 470 cortex). The genes are Pitx2, Aldh1a2,
bshanks@85 471 Ppfibp1, Slco1a5, Tshz2, Trhr, Col12a1,
bshanks@93 472 Ets1. Gradient similarity We noticed that the previous two scoring methods,
bshanks@93 473 which are pointwise, often found genes whose pattern of expression did not
bshanks@93 474 look similar in shape to the target region. For this reason we designed a
bshanks@93 475 non-pointwise local scoring method to detect when a gene had a pattern of
bshanks@93 476 expression which looked like it had a boundary whose shape is similar to the
bshanks@93 477 shape of the target region. We call this scoring method “gradient similarity”.
bshanks@93 478 One might say that gradient similarity attempts to measure how much the
bshanks@93 479 border of the area of gene expression and the border of the target region over-
bshanks@93 480 lap. However, since gene expression falls off continuously rather than jumping
bshanks@93 481 from its maximum value to zero, the spatial pattern of a gene’s expression often
bshanks@93 482 does not have a discrete border. Therefore, instead of looking for a discrete
bshanks@93 483 border, we look for large gradients. Gradient similarity is a symmetric function
bshanks@93 484 over two images (i.e. two scalar fields). It is is high to the extent that matching
bshanks@93 485 pixels which have large values and large gradients also have gradients which
bshanks@93 486 are oriented in a similar direction. The formula is:
bshanks@93 487 ∑
bshanks@93 488 pixel<img src="cmsy7-32.png" alt="&#x2208;" />pixels cos(abs(&#x2220;&#x2207;1 -&#x2220;&#x2207;2)) &#x22C5;|&#x2207;1| + |&#x2207;2|
bshanks@93 489 2 &#x22C5; pixel_value1 + pixel_value2
bshanks@93 490 2
bshanks@93 491 where &#x2207;1 and &#x2207;2 are the gradient vectors of the two images at the current
bshanks@93 492 pixel; &#x2220;&#x2207;i is the angle of the gradient of image i at the current pixel; |&#x2207;i| is
bshanks@93 493 the magnitude of the gradient of image i at the current pixel; and pixel_valuei
bshanks@93 494 is the value of the current pixel in image i.
bshanks@93 495 The intuition is that we want to see if the borders of the pattern in the
bshanks@93 496 two images are similar; if the borders are similar, then both images will have
bshanks@93 497 corresponding pixels with large gradients (because this is a border) which are
bshanks@93 498 oriented in a similar direction (because the borders are similar).
bshanks@93 499 Most of the genes in Figure 5 were identified via gradient similarity.
bshanks@93 500 Gradient similarity provides information complementary to cor-
bshanks@93 501 relation
bshanks@93 502 To show that gradient similarity can provide useful information that cannot
bshanks@93 503 be detected via pointwise analyses, consider Fig. 3. The top row of Fig. 3
bshanks@93 504 displays the 3 genes which most match area AUD, according to a pointwise
bshanks@93 505 method17. The bottom row displays the 3 genes which most match AUD ac-
bshanks@93 506 cording to a method which considers local geometry18 The pointwise method
bshanks@93 507 in the top row identifies genes which express more strongly in AUD than out-
bshanks@93 508 side of it; its weakness is that this includes many areas which don&#8217;t have a
bshanks@93 509 salient border matching the areal border. The geometric method identifies
bshanks@93 510 genes whose salient expression border seems to partially line up with the bor-
bshanks@93 511 der of AUD; its weakness is that this includes genes which don&#8217;t express over
bshanks@93 512 the entire area. Genes which have high rankings using both pointwise and bor-
bshanks@93 513 der criteria, such as Aph1a in the example, may be particularly good markers.
bshanks@93 514 None of these genes are, individually, a perfect marker for AUD; we deliberately
bshanks@93 515 chose a &#8220;difficult&#8221; area in order to better contrast pointwise with geometric
bshanks@93 516 methods.
bshanks@93 517 Areas which can be identified by single genes Using gradient simi-
bshanks@94 518 larity, we have already found single genes which roughly identify some areas
bshanks@94 519 and groupings of areas. For each of these areas, an example of a gene which roughly identifies it is shown in Figure 5. We
bshanks@94 520 have not yet cross-verified these genes in other atlases.
bshanks@92 521 _________________________________________
bshanks@93 522 17For each gene, a logistic regression in which the response variable was whether or not a surface pixel was within area AUD, and the predictor
bshanks@93 523 variable was the value of the expression of the gene underneath that pixel. The resulting scores were used to rank the genes in terms of how well
bshanks@93 524 they predict area AUD.
bshanks@93 525 18For each gene the gradient similarity between (a) a map of the expression of each gene on the cortical surface and (b) the shape of area AUD,
bshanks@93 526 was calculated, and this was used to rank the genes.
bshanks@94 527 In addition, there are a number of areas which are almost identified by single genes: COAa+NLOT (anterior part of
bshanks@94 528 cortical amygdalar area, nucleus of the lateral olfactory tract), ENT (entorhinal), ACAv (ventral anterior cingulate), VIS
bshanks@94 529 (visual), AUD (auditory).
bshanks@94 530 These results validate our expectation that the ABA dataset can be exploited to find marker genes for many cortical
bshanks@94 531 areas, while also validating the relevancy of our new scoring method, gradient similarity.
bshanks@93 532 Combinations of multiple genes are useful and necessary for some areas
bshanks@93 533 In Figure 4, we give an example of a cortical area which is not marked by any single gene, but which can be identified
bshanks@93 534 combinatorially. Acccording to logistic regression, gene wwc1 is the best fit single gene for predicting whether or not a
bshanks@93 535 pixel on the cortical surface belongs to the motor area (area MO). The upper-left picture in Figure 4 shows wwc1&#8217;s spatial
bshanks@93 536 expression pattern over the cortex. The lower-right boundary of MO is represented reasonably well by this gene, but the
bshanks@93 537 gene overshoots the upper-left boundary. This flattened 2-D representation does not show it, but the area corresponding
bshanks@93 538 to the overshoot is the medial surface of the cortex. MO is only found on the dorsal surface. Gene mtif2 is shown in the
bshanks@93 539 upper-right. Mtif2 captures MO&#8217;s upper-left boundary, but not its lower-right boundary. Mtif2 does not express very much
bshanks@93 540 on the medial surface. By adding together the values at each pixel in these two figures, we get the lower-left image. This
bshanks@93 541 combination captures area MO much better than any single gene.
bshanks@93 542 This shows that our proposal to develop a method to find combinations of marker genes is both possible and necessary.
bshanks@94 543 Feature selection integrated with prediction As noted earlier, in general, any classifier can be used for feature
bshanks@94 544 selection by running it inside a stepwise wrapper. Also, some learning algorithms integrate soft constraints on number of
bshanks@94 545 features used. Examples of both of these will be seen in the section &#8220;Multivariate supervised learning&#8221;.
bshanks@94 546 Multivariate supervised learning
bshanks@60 547
bshanks@69 548
bshanks@69 549
bshanks@69 550
bshanks@69 551 Figure 6: First row: the first 6 reduced dimensions, using PCA. Second
bshanks@69 552 row: the first 6 reduced dimensions, using NNMF. Third row: the first
bshanks@69 553 six reduced dimensions, using landmark Isomap. Bottom row: examples
bshanks@69 554 of kmeans clustering applied to reduced datasets to find 7 clusters. Left:
bshanks@69 555 19 of the major subdivisions of the cortex. Second from left: PCA. Third
bshanks@69 556 from left: NNMF. Right: Landmark Isomap. Additional details: In the
bshanks@69 557 third and fourth rows, 7 dimensions were found, but only 6 displayed. In
bshanks@69 558 the last row: for PCA, 50 dimensions were used; for NNMF, 6 dimensions
bshanks@93 559 were used; for landmark Isomap, 7 dimensions were used. Forward stepwise logistic regression Lo-
bshanks@93 560 gistic regression is a popular method for pre-
bshanks@93 561 dictive modeling of categorial data. As a pi-
bshanks@93 562 lot run, for five cortical areas (SS, AUD, RSP,
bshanks@93 563 VIS, and MO), we performed forward stepwise
bshanks@93 564 logistic regression to find single genes, pairs of
bshanks@93 565 genes, and triplets of genes which predict areal
bshanks@93 566 identify. This is an example of feature selec-
bshanks@93 567 tion integrated with prediction using a stepwise
bshanks@93 568 wrapper. Some of the single genes found were
bshanks@93 569 shown in various figures throughout this doc-
bshanks@93 570 ument, and Figure 4 shows a combination of
bshanks@93 571 genes which was found.
bshanks@93 572 We felt that, for single genes, gradient simi-
bshanks@93 573 larity did a better job than logistic regression at
bshanks@93 574 capturing our subjective impression of a &#8220;good
bshanks@93 575 gene&#8221;.
bshanks@93 576 SVM on all genes at once
bshanks@93 577 In order to see how well one can do when
bshanks@93 578 looking at all genes at once, we ran a support
bshanks@93 579 vector machine to classify cortical surface pix-
bshanks@93 580 els based on their gene expression profiles. We
bshanks@93 581 achieved classification accuracy of about 81%19.
bshanks@93 582 This shows that the genes included in the ABA
bshanks@93 583 dataset are sufficient to define much of cortical
bshanks@93 584 anatomy. However, as noted above, a classifier
bshanks@93 585 that looks at all the genes at once isn&#8217;t as prac-
bshanks@93 586 tically useful as a classifier that uses only a few
bshanks@93 587 genes.
bshanks@94 588 _________________________________________
bshanks@94 589 195-fold cross-validation.
bshanks@93 590 Data-driven redrawing of the cor-
bshanks@85 591 tical map
bshanks@93 592 We have applied the following dimensionality reduction algorithms to reduce the dimensionality of the gene expression
bshanks@93 593 profile associated with each voxel: Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Simple PCA (SPCA), Multi-Dimensional Scaling
bshanks@93 594 (MDS), Isomap, Landmark Isomap, Laplacian eigenmaps, Local Tangent Space Alignment (LTSA), Hessian locally linear
bshanks@93 595 embedding, Diffusion maps, Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (SNE), Stochastic Proximity Embedding (SPE), Fast Maximum
bshanks@93 596 Variance Unfolding (FastMVU), Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF). Space constraints prevent us from showing
bshanks@93 597 many of the results, but as a sample, PCA, NNMF, and landmark Isomap are shown in the first, second, and third rows of
bshanks@93 598 Figure 6.
bshanks@93 599 After applying the dimensionality reduction, we ran clustering algorithms on the reduced data. To date we have tried
bshanks@93 600 k-means and spectral clustering. The results of k-means after PCA, NNMF, and landmark Isomap are shown in the last
bshanks@93 601 row of Figure 6. To compare, the leftmost picture on the bottom row of Figure 6 shows some of the major subdivisions of
bshanks@93 602 cortex. These results clearly show that different dimensionality reduction techniques capture different aspects of the data
bshanks@93 603 and lead to different clusterings, indicating the utility of our proposal to produce a detailed comparion of these techniques
bshanks@93 604 as applied to the domain of genomic anatomy.
bshanks@71 605
bshanks@85 606 Figure 7: Prototypes corresponding to sample gene clusters,
bshanks@85 607 clustered by gradient similarity. Region boundaries for the
bshanks@92 608 region that most matches each prototype are overlayed. Many areas are captured by clusters of genes We
bshanks@92 609 also clustered the genes using gradient similarity to see if
bshanks@92 610 the spatial regions defined by any clusters matched known
bshanks@92 611 anatomical regions. Figure 7 shows, for ten sample gene
bshanks@92 612 clusters, each cluster&#8217;s average expression pattern, compared
bshanks@92 613 to a known anatomical boundary. This suggests that it is
bshanks@92 614 worth attempting to cluster genes, and then to use the re-
bshanks@92 615 sults to cluster voxels.
bshanks@92 616 The approach: what we plan to do
bshanks@92 617 Flatmap cortex and segment cortical layers
bshanks@92 618 There are multiple ways to flatten 3-D data into 2-D. We
bshanks@92 619 will compare mappings from manifolds to planes which at-
bshanks@92 620 tempt to preserve size (such as the one used by Caret[7])
bshanks@92 621 with mappings which preserve angle (conformal maps). Our
bshanks@92 622 method will include a statistical test that warns the user if
bshanks@92 623 the assumption of 2-D structure seems to be wrong.
bshanks@86 624 We have not yet made use of radial profiles. While the radial profiles may be used &#8220;raw&#8221;, for laminar structures like the
bshanks@86 625 cortex another strategy is to group together voxels in the same cortical layer; each surface pixel would then be associated
bshanks@86 626 with one expression level per gene per layer. We will develop a segmentation algorithm to automatically identify the layer
bshanks@86 627 boundaries.
bshanks@30 628 Develop algorithms that find genetic markers for anatomical regions
bshanks@92 629 We will develop scoring methods for evaluating how good individual genes are at marking areas. We will compare pointwise,
bshanks@92 630 geometric, and information-theoretic measures. We already developed one entirely new scoring method (gradient similarity),
bshanks@92 631 but we may develop more. Scoring measures that we will explore will include the L1 norm, correlation, expression energy
bshanks@92 632 ratio, conditional entropy, gradient similarity, Jaccard similarity, Dice similarity, Hough transform, and statistical tests such
bshanks@94 633 as Student&#8217;s t-test, and the Mann-Whitney U test (a non-parametric test). In addition, any classifier induces a scoring
bshanks@94 634 measure on genes by taking the prediction error when using that gene to predict the target.
bshanks@92 635 Using some combination of these measures, we will develop a procedure to find single marker genes for anatomical regions:
bshanks@94 636 for each cortical area, we will rank the genes by their ability to delineate each area. We will quantitatively compare the list
bshanks@94 637 of single genes generated by our method to the lists generated by previous methods which are mentioned in Aim 1 Related
bshanks@94 638 Work.
bshanks@92 639 Some cortical areas have no single marker genes but can be identified by combinatorial coding. This requires multivariate
bshanks@92 640 scoring measures and feature selection procedures. Many of the measures, such as expression energy, gradient similarity,
bshanks@92 641 Jaccard, Dice, Hough, Student&#8217;s t, and Mann-Whitney U are univariate. We will extend these scoring measures for use
bshanks@92 642 in multivariate feature selection, that is, for scoring how well combinations of genes, rather than individual genes, can
bshanks@92 643 distinguish a target area. There are existing multivariate forms of some of the univariate scoring measures, for example,
bshanks@92 644 Hotelling&#8217;s T-square is a multivariate analog of Student&#8217;s t.
bshanks@92 645 We will develop a feature selection procedure for choosing the best small set of marker genes for a given anatomical
bshanks@92 646 area. In addition to using the scoring measures that we develop, we will also explore (a) feature selection using a stepwise
bshanks@94 647 wrapper over &#8220;vanilla&#8221; classifiers such as logistic regression, (b) supervised learning methods such as decision trees which
bshanks@94 648 incrementally/greedily combine single gene markers into sets, and (c) supervised learning methods which use soft constraints
bshanks@94 649 to minimize number of features used, such as sparse support vector machines.
bshanks@94 650 Since errors of displacement and of shape may cause genes and target areas to match less than they should, we will
bshanks@94 651 consider the robustness of feature selection methods in the presence of error. Some of these methods, such as the Hough
bshanks@94 652 transform, are designed to be resistant in the presence of error, but many are not. We will consider extensions to scoring
bshanks@94 653 measures that may improve their robustness; for example, a wrapper that runs a scoring method on small displacements
bshanks@94 654 and distortions of the data adds robustness to registration error at the expense of computation time.
bshanks@94 655 An area may be difficult to identify because the boundaries are misdrawn in the atlas, or because the shape of the natural
bshanks@94 656 domain of gene expression corresponding to the area is different from the shape of the area as recognized by anatomists.
bshanks@94 657 We will extend our procedure to handle difficult areas by combining areas or redrawing their boundaries. We will develop
bshanks@94 658 extensions to our procedure which (a) detect when a difficult area could be fit if its boundary were redrawn slightly, and (b)
bshanks@94 659 detect when a difficult area could be combined with adjacent areas to create a larger area which can be fit.
bshanks@92 660 A future publication on the method that we develop in Aim 1 will review the scoring measures and quantitatively compare
bshanks@92 661 their performance in order to provide a foundation for future research of methods of marker gene finding. We will measure
bshanks@92 662 the robustness of the scoring measures as well as their absolute performance on our dataset.
bshanks@94 663 Classifiers
bshanks@94 664 We will explore and compare different classifiers. As noted above, this activity is not separate from the previous one,
bshanks@94 665 because some supervised learning algorithms include feature selection, and any classifier can be combined with a stepwise
bshanks@94 666 wrapper for use as a feature selection method. We will explore logistic regression (including spatial models[15]), decision
bshanks@94 667 trees20 , sparse SVMs, generative mixture models (including naive bayes), kernel density estimation, genetic algorithms, and
bshanks@94 668 artificial neural networks.
bshanks@94 669 Decision trees
bshanks@86 670 # confirm with EMAGE, GeneAtlas, GENSAT, etc, to fight overfitting, two hemis
bshanks@30 671 Develop algorithms to suggest a division of a structure into anatomical parts
bshanks@30 672 1.Explore dimensionality reduction algorithms applied to pixels: including TODO
bshanks@30 673 2.Explore dimensionality reduction algorithms applied to genes: including TODO
bshanks@30 674 3.Explore clustering algorithms applied to pixels: including TODO
bshanks@94 675 4.Explore clustering algorithms applied to genes: including gene shaving[9], TODO
bshanks@30 676 5.Develop an algorithm to use dimensionality reduction and/or hierarchial clustering to create anatomical maps
bshanks@30 677 6.Run this algorithm on the cortex: present a hierarchial, genoarchitectonic map of the cortex
bshanks@51 678 # Linear discriminant analysis
bshanks@51 679 # jbt, coclustering
bshanks@51 680 # self-organizing map
bshanks@92 681 # Linear discriminant analysis
bshanks@53 682 # compare using clustering scores
bshanks@64 683 # multivariate gradient similarity
bshanks@66 684 # deep belief nets
bshanks@87 685 Apply these algorithms to the cortex
bshanks@87 686 Using the methods developed in Aim 1, we will present, for each cortical area, a short list of markers to identify that
bshanks@87 687 area; and we will also present lists of &#8220;panels&#8221; of genes that can be used to delineate many areas at once. Using the methods
bshanks@87 688 developed in Aim 2, we will present one or more hierarchial cortical maps. We will identify and explain how the statistical
bshanks@92 689 structure in the gene expression data led to any unexpected or interesting features of these maps, and we will provide
bshanks@92 690 biological hypotheses to interpret any new cortical areas, or groupings of areas, which are discovered.
bshanks@94 691 _________________________________________
bshanks@94 692 20Actually, we have already begun to explore decision trees. For each cortical area, we have used the C4.5 algorithm to find a decision tree for
bshanks@94 693 that area. We achieved good classification accuracy on our training set, but the number of genes that appeared in each tree was too large. We
bshanks@94 694 plan to implement a pruning procedure to generate trees that use fewer genes.
bshanks@87 695 Timeline and milestones
bshanks@90 696 Finding marker genes
bshanks@89 697 &#x2219;September-November 2009: Develop an automated mechanism for segmenting the cortical voxels into layers
bshanks@89 698 &#x2219;November 2009 (milestone): Have completed construction of a flatmapped, cortical dataset with information for each
bshanks@89 699 layer
bshanks@89 700 &#x2219;October 2009-April 2010: Develop scoring methods and to test them in various supervised learning frameworks. Also
bshanks@88 701 test out various dimensionality reduction schemes in combination with supervised learning. create or extend supervised
bshanks@88 702 learning frameworks which use multivariate versions of the best scoring methods.
bshanks@89 703 &#x2219;January 2010 (milestone): Submit a publication on single marker genes for cortical areas
bshanks@88 704 &#x2219;February-July 2010: Continue to develop scoring methods and supervised learning frameworks. Explore the best way
bshanks@88 705 to integrate radial profiles with supervised learning. Explore the best way to make supervised learning techniques
bshanks@88 706 robust against incorrect labels (i.e. when the areas drawn on the input cortical map are slightly off). Quantitatively
bshanks@88 707 compare the performance of different supervised learning techniques. Validate marker genes found in the ABA dataset
bshanks@88 708 by checking against other gene expression datasets. Create documentation and unit tests for software toolbox for Aim
bshanks@88 709 1. Respond to user bug reports for Aim 1 software toolbox.
bshanks@89 710 &#x2219;June 2010 (milestone): Submit a paper describing a method fulfilling Aim 1. Release toolbox.
bshanks@89 711 &#x2219;July 2010 (milestone): Submit a paper describing combinations of marker genes for each cortical area, and a small
bshanks@88 712 number of marker genes that can, in combination, define most of the areas at once
bshanks@90 713 Revealing new ways to parcellate a structure into regions
bshanks@91 714 &#x2219;June 2010-March 2011: Explore dimensionality reduction algorithms for Aim 2. Explore standard hierarchial clus-
bshanks@91 715 tering algorithms, used in combination with dimensionality reduction, for Aim 2. Explore co-clustering algorithms.
bshanks@91 716 Think about how radial profile information can be used for Aim 2. Adapt clustering algorithms to use radial profile
bshanks@91 717 information. Quantitatively compare the performance of different dimensionality reduction and clustering techniques.
bshanks@89 718 Quantitatively compare the value of different flatmapping methods and ways of representing radial profiles.
bshanks@89 719 &#x2219;March 2011 (milestone): Submit a paper describing a method fulfilling Aim 2. Release toolbox.
bshanks@89 720 &#x2219;February-May 2011: Using the methods developed for Aim 2, explore the genomic anatomy of the cortex. If new ways
bshanks@89 721 of organizing the cortex into areas are discovered, read the literature and talk to people to learn about research related
bshanks@89 722 to interpreting our results. Create documentation and unit tests for software toolbox for Aim 2. Respond to user bug
bshanks@90 723 reports for Aim 2 software toolbox.
bshanks@89 724 &#x2219;May 2011 (milestone): Submit a paper on the genomic anatomy of the cortex, using the methods developed in Aim 2
bshanks@89 725 &#x2219;May-August 2011: Revisit Aim 1 to see if what was learned during Aim 2 can improve the methods for Aim 1. Follow
bshanks@89 726 up on responses to our papers. Possibly submit another paper.
bshanks@33 727 Bibliography &amp; References Cited
bshanks@85 728 [1]Chris Adamson, Leigh Johnston, Terrie Inder, Sandra Rees, Iven Mareels, and Gary Egan. A Tracking Approach to
bshanks@85 729 Parcellation of the Cerebral Cortex, volume Volume 3749/2005 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 294&#8211;301.
bshanks@85 730 Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2005.
bshanks@85 731 [2]J. Annese, A. Pitiot, I. D. Dinov, and A. W. Toga. A myelo-architectonic method for the structural classification of
bshanks@85 732 cortical areas. NeuroImage, 21(1):15&#8211;26, 2004.
bshanks@85 733 [3]Tanya Barrett, Dennis B. Troup, Stephen E. Wilhite, Pierre Ledoux, Dmitry Rudnev, Carlos Evangelista, Irene F.
bshanks@53 734 Kim, Alexandra Soboleva, Maxim Tomashevsky, and Ron Edgar. NCBI GEO: mining tens of millions of expression
bshanks@53 735 profiles&#8211;database and tools update. Nucl. Acids Res., 35(suppl_1):D760&#8211;765, 2007.
bshanks@85 736 [4]George W. Bell, Tatiana A. Yatskievych, and Parker B. Antin. GEISHA, a whole-mount in situ hybridization gene
bshanks@53 737 expression screen in chicken embryos. Developmental Dynamics, 229(3):677&#8211;687, 2004.
bshanks@85 738 [5]James P Carson, Tao Ju, Hui-Chen Lu, Christina Thaller, Mei Xu, Sarah L Pallas, Michael C Crair, Joe Warren, Wah
bshanks@53 739 Chiu, and Gregor Eichele. A digital atlas to characterize the mouse brain transcriptome. PLoS Comput Biol, 1(4):e41,
bshanks@53 740 2005.
bshanks@85 741 [6]Mark H. Chin, Alex B. Geng, Arshad H. Khan, Wei-Jun Qian, Vladislav A. Petyuk, Jyl Boline, Shawn Levy, Arthur W.
bshanks@53 742 Toga, Richard D. Smith, Richard M. Leahy, and Desmond J. Smith. A genome-scale map of expression for a mouse
bshanks@53 743 brain section obtained using voxelation. Physiol. Genomics, 30(3):313&#8211;321, August 2007.
bshanks@85 744 [7]D C Van Essen, H A Drury, J Dickson, J Harwell, D Hanlon, and C H Anderson. An integrated software suite for surface-
bshanks@33 745 based analyses of cerebral cortex. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association: JAMIA, 8(5):443&#8211;59, 2001.
bshanks@33 746 PMID: 11522765.
bshanks@85 747 [8]Shiaoching Gong, Chen Zheng, Martin L. Doughty, Kasia Losos, Nicholas Didkovsky, Uta B. Schambra, Norma J.
bshanks@44 748 Nowak, Alexandra Joyner, Gabrielle Leblanc, Mary E. Hatten, and Nathaniel Heintz. A gene expression atlas of the
bshanks@44 749 central nervous system based on bacterial artificial chromosomes. Nature, 425(6961):917&#8211;925, October 2003.
bshanks@94 750 [9]Trevor Hastie, Robert Tibshirani, Michael Eisen, Ash Alizadeh, Ronald Levy, Louis Staudt, Wing Chan, David Botstein,
bshanks@94 751 and Patrick Brown. &#8217;Gene shaving&#8217; as a method for identifying distinct sets of genes with similar expression patterns.
bshanks@94 752 Genome Biology, 1(2):research0003.1&#8211;research0003.21, 2000.
bshanks@94 753 [10]Jano Hemert and Richard Baldock. Matching Spatial Regions with Combinations of Interacting Gene Expression Pat-
bshanks@46 754 terns, volume 13 of Communications in Computer and Information Science, pages 347&#8211;361. Springer Berlin Heidelberg,
bshanks@46 755 2008.
bshanks@94 756 [11]F. Kruggel, M. K. Brckner, Th. Arendt, C. J. Wiggins, and D. Y. von Cramon. Analyzing the neocortical fine-structure.
bshanks@85 757 Medical Image Analysis, 7(3):251&#8211;264, September 2003.
bshanks@94 758 [12]Erh-Fang Lee, Jyl Boline, and Arthur W. Toga. A High-Resolution anatomical framework of the neonatal mouse brain
bshanks@53 759 for managing gene expression data. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 1:6, 2007. PMC2525996.
bshanks@94 760 [13]Susan Magdaleno, Patricia Jensen, Craig L. Brumwell, Anna Seal, Karen Lehman, Andrew Asbury, Tony Cheung,
bshanks@44 761 Tommie Cornelius, Diana M. Batten, Christopher Eden, Shannon M. Norland, Dennis S. Rice, Nilesh Dosooye, Sundeep
bshanks@44 762 Shakya, Perdeep Mehta, and Tom Curran. BGEM: an in situ hybridization database of gene expression in the embryonic
bshanks@44 763 and adult mouse nervous system. PLoS Biology, 4(4):e86 EP &#8211;, April 2006.
bshanks@94 764 [14]Lydia Ng, Amy Bernard, Chris Lau, Caroline C Overly, Hong-Wei Dong, Chihchau Kuan, Sayan Pathak, Susan M
bshanks@44 765 Sunkin, Chinh Dang, Jason W Bohland, Hemant Bokil, Partha P Mitra, Luis Puelles, John Hohmann, David J Anderson,
bshanks@44 766 Ed S Lein, Allan R Jones, and Michael Hawrylycz. An anatomic gene expression atlas of the adult mouse brain. Nat
bshanks@44 767 Neurosci, 12(3):356&#8211;362, March 2009.
bshanks@94 768 [15]Christopher J. Paciorek. Computational techniques for spatial logistic regression with large data sets. Computational
bshanks@94 769 Statistics &amp; Data Analysis, 51(8):3631&#8211;3653, May 2007.
bshanks@94 770 [16]George Paxinos and Keith B.J. Franklin. The Mouse Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates. Academic Press, 2 edition, July
bshanks@36 771 2001.
bshanks@94 772 [17]A. Schleicher, N. Palomero-Gallagher, P. Morosan, S. Eickhoff, T. Kowalski, K. Vos, K. Amunts, and K. Zilles. Quanti-
bshanks@85 773 tative architectural analysis: a new approach to cortical mapping. Anatomy and Embryology, 210(5):373&#8211;386, December
bshanks@85 774 2005.
bshanks@94 775 [18]Oliver Schmitt, Lars Hmke, and Lutz Dmbgen. Detection of cortical transition regions utilizing statistical analyses of
bshanks@85 776 excess masses. NeuroImage, 19(1):42&#8211;63, May 2003.
bshanks@94 777 [19]Constance M. Smith, Jacqueline H. Finger, Terry F. Hayamizu, Ingeborg J. McCright, Janan T. Eppig, James A.
bshanks@53 778 Kadin, Joel E. Richardson, and Martin Ringwald. The mouse gene expression database (GXD): 2007 update. Nucl.
bshanks@53 779 Acids Res., 35(suppl_1):D618&#8211;623, 2007.
bshanks@94 780 [20]Judy Sprague, Leyla Bayraktaroglu, Dave Clements, Tom Conlin, David Fashena, Ken Frazer, Melissa Haendel, Dou-
bshanks@53 781 glas G Howe, Prita Mani, Sridhar Ramachandran, Kevin Schaper, Erik Segerdell, Peiran Song, Brock Sprunger, Sierra
bshanks@53 782 Taylor, Ceri E Van Slyke, and Monte Westerfield. The zebrafish information network: the zebrafish model organism
bshanks@53 783 database. Nucleic Acids Research, 34(Database issue):D581&#8211;5, 2006. PMID: 16381936.
bshanks@94 784 [21]Larry Swanson. Brain Maps: Structure of the Rat Brain. Academic Press, 3 edition, November 2003.
bshanks@94 785 [22]Carol L. Thompson, Sayan D. Pathak, Andreas Jeromin, Lydia L. Ng, Cameron R. MacPherson, Marty T. Mortrud,
bshanks@33 786 Allison Cusick, Zackery L. Riley, Susan M. Sunkin, Amy Bernard, Ralph B. Puchalski, Fred H. Gage, Allan R. Jones,
bshanks@33 787 Vladimir B. Bajic, Michael J. Hawrylycz, and Ed S. Lein. Genomic anatomy of the hippocampus. Neuron, 60(6):1010&#8211;
bshanks@33 788 1021, December 2008.
bshanks@94 789 [23]Pavel Tomancak, Amy Beaton, Richard Weiszmann, Elaine Kwan, ShengQiang Shu, Suzanna E Lewis, Stephen
bshanks@53 790 Richards, Michael Ashburner, Volker Hartenstein, Susan E Celniker, and Gerald M Rubin. Systematic determina-
bshanks@53 791 tion of patterns of gene expression during drosophila embryogenesis. Genome Biology, 3(12):research008818814, 2002.
bshanks@53 792 PMC151190.
bshanks@94 793 [24]Jano van Hemert and Richard Baldock. Mining Spatial Gene Expression Data for Association Rules, volume 4414/2007
bshanks@53 794 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 66&#8211;76. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2007.
bshanks@94 795 [25]Shanmugasundaram Venkataraman, Peter Stevenson, Yiya Yang, Lorna Richardson, Nicholas Burton, Thomas P. Perry,
bshanks@44 796 Paul Smith, Richard A. Baldock, Duncan R. Davidson, and Jeffrey H. Christiansen. EMAGE edinburgh mouse atlas
bshanks@44 797 of gene expression: 2008 update. Nucl. Acids Res., 36(suppl_1):D860&#8211;865, 2008.
bshanks@94 798 [26]Axel Visel, Christina Thaller, and Gregor Eichele. GenePaint.org: an atlas of gene expression patterns in the mouse
bshanks@44 799 embryo. Nucl. Acids Res., 32(suppl_1):D552&#8211;556, 2004.
bshanks@94 800 [27]Robert H Waterston, Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, Ewan Birney, Jane Rogers, Josep F Abril, Pankaj Agarwal, Richa Agar-
bshanks@44 801 wala, Rachel Ainscough, Marina Alexandersson, Peter An, Stylianos E Antonarakis, John Attwood, Robert Baertsch,
bshanks@44 802 Jonathon Bailey, Karen Barlow, Stephan Beck, Eric Berry, Bruce Birren, Toby Bloom, Peer Bork, Marc Botcherby,
bshanks@44 803 Nicolas Bray, Michael R Brent, Daniel G Brown, Stephen D Brown, Carol Bult, John Burton, Jonathan Butler,
bshanks@44 804 Robert D Campbell, Piero Carninci, Simon Cawley, Francesca Chiaromonte, Asif T Chinwalla, Deanna M Church,
bshanks@44 805 Michele Clamp, Christopher Clee, Francis S Collins, Lisa L Cook, Richard R Copley, Alan Coulson, Olivier Couronne,
bshanks@44 806 James Cuff, Val Curwen, Tim Cutts, Mark Daly, Robert David, Joy Davies, Kimberly D Delehaunty, Justin Deri,
bshanks@44 807 Emmanouil T Dermitzakis, Colin Dewey, Nicholas J Dickens, Mark Diekhans, Sheila Dodge, Inna Dubchak, Diane M
bshanks@44 808 Dunn, Sean R Eddy, Laura Elnitski, Richard D Emes, Pallavi Eswara, Eduardo Eyras, Adam Felsenfeld, Ginger A
bshanks@44 809 Fewell, Paul Flicek, Karen Foley, Wayne N Frankel, Lucinda A Fulton, Robert S Fulton, Terrence S Furey, Diane Gage,
bshanks@44 810 Richard A Gibbs, Gustavo Glusman, Sante Gnerre, Nick Goldman, Leo Goodstadt, Darren Grafham, Tina A Graves,
bshanks@44 811 Eric D Green, Simon Gregory, Roderic Guig, Mark Guyer, Ross C Hardison, David Haussler, Yoshihide Hayashizaki,
bshanks@44 812 LaDeana W Hillier, Angela Hinrichs, Wratko Hlavina, Timothy Holzer, Fan Hsu, Axin Hua, Tim Hubbard, Adrienne
bshanks@44 813 Hunt, Ian Jackson, David B Jaffe, L Steven Johnson, Matthew Jones, Thomas A Jones, Ann Joy, Michael Kamal,
bshanks@44 814 Elinor K Karlsson, Donna Karolchik, Arkadiusz Kasprzyk, Jun Kawai, Evan Keibler, Cristyn Kells, W James Kent,
bshanks@44 815 Andrew Kirby, Diana L Kolbe, Ian Korf, Raju S Kucherlapati, Edward J Kulbokas, David Kulp, Tom Landers, J P
bshanks@44 816 Leger, Steven Leonard, Ivica Letunic, Rosie Levine, Jia Li, Ming Li, Christine Lloyd, Susan Lucas, Bin Ma, Donna R
bshanks@44 817 Maglott, Elaine R Mardis, Lucy Matthews, Evan Mauceli, John H Mayer, Megan McCarthy, W Richard McCombie,
bshanks@44 818 Stuart McLaren, Kirsten McLay, John D McPherson, Jim Meldrim, Beverley Meredith, Jill P Mesirov, Webb Miller,
bshanks@44 819 Tracie L Miner, Emmanuel Mongin, Kate T Montgomery, Michael Morgan, Richard Mott, James C Mullikin, Donna M
bshanks@44 820 Muzny, William E Nash, Joanne O Nelson, Michael N Nhan, Robert Nicol, Zemin Ning, Chad Nusbaum, Michael J
bshanks@44 821 O&#8217;Connor, Yasushi Okazaki, Karen Oliver, Emma Overton-Larty, Lior Pachter, Gens Parra, Kymberlie H Pepin, Jane
bshanks@44 822 Peterson, Pavel Pevzner, Robert Plumb, Craig S Pohl, Alex Poliakov, Tracy C Ponce, Chris P Ponting, Simon Potter,
bshanks@44 823 Michael Quail, Alexandre Reymond, Bruce A Roe, Krishna M Roskin, Edward M Rubin, Alistair G Rust, Ralph San-
bshanks@44 824 tos, Victor Sapojnikov, Brian Schultz, Jrg Schultz, Matthias S Schwartz, Scott Schwartz, Carol Scott, Steven Seaman,
bshanks@44 825 Steve Searle, Ted Sharpe, Andrew Sheridan, Ratna Shownkeen, Sarah Sims, Jonathan B Singer, Guy Slater, Arian
bshanks@44 826 Smit, Douglas R Smith, Brian Spencer, Arne Stabenau, Nicole Stange-Thomann, Charles Sugnet, Mikita Suyama,
bshanks@44 827 Glenn Tesler, Johanna Thompson, David Torrents, Evanne Trevaskis, John Tromp, Catherine Ucla, Abel Ureta-Vidal,
bshanks@44 828 Jade P Vinson, Andrew C Von Niederhausern, Claire M Wade, Melanie Wall, Ryan J Weber, Robert B Weiss, Michael C
bshanks@44 829 Wendl, Anthony P West, Kris Wetterstrand, Raymond Wheeler, Simon Whelan, Jamey Wierzbowski, David Willey,
bshanks@44 830 Sophie Williams, Richard K Wilson, Eitan Winter, Kim C Worley, Dudley Wyman, Shan Yang, Shiaw-Pyng Yang,
bshanks@44 831 Evgeny M Zdobnov, Michael C Zody, and Eric S Lander. Initial sequencing and comparative analysis of the mouse
bshanks@44 832 genome. Nature, 420(6915):520&#8211;62, December 2002. PMID: 12466850.
bshanks@33 833
bshanks@33 834