The BRAIN Initiative® Cell Atlas Network (BICAN) has launched its first major data release, marking a significant milestone in the ambitious effort to map the whole human brain.

The data, accessible through the BICAN Rapid Release Inventory, includes single-cell and single-nucleus transcriptomic and epigenomic profiles from humans, mice, and 10 other mammalian species. Sourced from multiple grants and labs within the consortium, including the Allen Institute, these data are from projects that aim to identify and define brain cell types based on molecular profiles.

“The tap is open, the data is flowing, and more is on the way,” said Carol Thompson, Ph.D., associate director of data management at the Allen Institute. “The hope is that if we can encourage data reuse and sharing by multiple labs, we can maximize the value of these datasets and really amplify the public investment into research.”

This effort is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®. BICAN unites neuroscientists, computational biologists, and software engineers to create a comprehensive atlas of the human brain. This effort builds on earlier NIH BRAIN Initiative-funded projects at the Allen Institute and elsewhere, which mapped the cells of the entire mouse brain and parts of the human brain by studying the genes active in individual cells.

“This release represents a major step forward to this next frontier of neuroscience, where we finally will start to understand what sets the human brain apart,” said Fenna Krienen, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute whose lab contributed data to today’s release.