Overview and Goals

As a result of the Neuroscience Blueprint, 15 Institutes of the National Institutes of Health have established a consortium of four centers to provide NIH funded neuroscience investigators with the opportunity to further their research through the use of gene expression profiling technology and SNP genotyping. The primary goal of this consortium is to advance translational research through acquisition and dissemination of high quality array based data.

The four centers in the consortium are located at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix, AZ, Yale University in New Haven, CT, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Each center provides access to different array platforms.

TGen
TGen provides Affymetrix microarray resources exclusively.

Duke University
The Duke microarray center provides oligo microarray resources and laser capture microdissection options.

UCLA
The UCLA microarray center provides both Affymetrix and Agilent microarrays.

Yale University
The W.M. Keck Foundation Biotechnology Resource Laboratory at Yale provides Affymetrix, oligo and custom microarray resources.

Goals

1. Quality. From experimental design and education, to technical assistance and training, to bioinformatics support and manuscript preparation assistance, the centers strive to produce the highest quality and most meaningful expression and SNP data possible.
   
   
2. Education and Training. Particular emphasis is placed on educating investigators in experimental design, technical procedures and data analysis which is specific to the field of neuroscience.
   
   
3. Flexibility. The three centers use a diverse spectrum of array platforms. They will strive to ensure that the appropriate experimental design requirements are met.
   
   
4. Data sharing. The consortium is committed to the concept of data dissemination in a timely fashion. All data generated becomes publicly available on our website 6 months after completion of the experiment.
   
   
5. Oversight. The centers are monitored by a Consortium Advisory Panel comprised of independent experts in the field.