title: Sharing and reusing gene expression profiling data in neuroscience.
abstract: As public availability of gene expression profiling data increases, it is natural to ask how these data can be used by neuroscientists. Here we review the public availability of high-throughput expression data in neuroscience and how it has been reused, and tools that have been developed to facilitate reuse. There is increasing interest in making expression data reuse a routine part of the neuroscience tool-kit, but there are a number of challenges. Data must become more readily available in public databases; efforts to encourage investigators to make data available are important, as is education on the benefits of public data release. Once released, data must be better-annotated. Techniques and tools for data reuse are also in need of improvement. Integration of expression profiling data with neuroscience-specific resources such as anatomical atlases will further increase the value of expression data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, UBC Bioinformatics Centre, University of British Columbia, 177 Michael Smith Laboratories 2185 East Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z4, Canada.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pavlidis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009488:Neurosciences