"Mapping The Brain's Genetic Landscape " - Benedict Carey
For the past two decades, scientists have been exploring the genetics of schizophrenia, autism and other brain disorders, looking for a path toward causation. Now, using more advanced tools, brain scientists have begun to fill out the picture. In a series of 11 papers, published in Science and related journals, a consortium of researchers has produced the most richly detailed model of the brain’s genetic landscape to date, one that incorporates not only genes but also gene regulators, cellular data and developmental information across the human life span. The $50 million project, initiated in 2015 and financed by the National Institute of Mental Health, involves more than a dozen research centers and scores specialists in cell biology, genetics and bioinformatics, the application of advanced computer learning to huge data sets. It is an all-hands, brute-force effort, coordinating top brain banks and brain scientists at major research centers, led by Yale, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, UCLA, and the University of California, San Francisco.
— Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai