RE: cell types, brain regions mentioned in gensat

Hi all,

I completely agree with Mihail's comments on the differences between mouse
vs human brain structures.  To make matters more complicated, in mice, and
here I refer to the common ones used to generate transgenics and knockouts,
there are dramatic strain differences in brain structures as well.  For
example, many 129 and BALB/c substrains have either a partial or completely
missing corpus callosum (Livy
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=A
bstractPlus&list_uids=1795098&query_hl=7&itool=pubmed_docsum>  & Wahlsten,
1991) whereas C57BL/6, CBA, DBA all have an intact corpus callosum.      

What we need to achieve is a comprehensive list of brain structures and
neuron types that will take in to account the commonalities and differences
in species and strains.

Gwen

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mihail Bota [mailto:mbota@almaak-01.usc.edu] 
Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 2:35 PM
To: William Bug
Cc: W3C HCLSIG hcls; Donald Doherty, Ph.D.; Alan Ruttenberg; MaryAnn
Martone; Stephen Larson; Luis Marenco; Jack Park; Chris Mungall; Gwen Wong
Subject: Re: cell types, brain regions mentioned in gensat

 

It is very difficult, actually not very advisable, to borrow nomenclature

characteristic of one species to another species, without

similarities/homologies discussion. For example, in rodents there is no

separation between caudate and putamen (therefore the term caudoputamen),

while in humans and monkeys these structures are separate. Thus, for

rodents, BAMS has several nomenclatures, and it can be easily used. ABA

was actually made after Swanson 1998/2004, rat.

Caudoputamen is a part of striatum (sometimes called the dorsal part,

to make the difference of the ventral part, which is the nucleus accumbens),

therefore is not a "CNS unspecified".

The direct link to caudoputamen in BAMS, where you'll find

its tree (also specified in the Swanson-1998 XML page) is this:

http://brancusi.usc.edu/bkms/brain/show-braing2.php?aidi=129

Please look at the definitions associated to each of the regions names in
BAMS

for details in defining those.

 

Regarding cell ontologies, you may want to check BAMS Neurons Ontology,

which contains about 250 terms used for neurons in different regions of

the rat brain. There are about 37 brain regions "filled" with neurons in

BAMS, with retina and the cerebellar cortex being complete, and other

regions with high degree of coverage (paraventricular nucleus of
hypothalamus for

example). The approach is rather different of Cell Ontology and Senselab,

because we try to specify the classification criteria, as well as

other metadata such as references, collators, annotations, etc.

We register neuron types and classes defined by a large set of techniques

and strive to insert relations between terms.

You can use the ontology from the "Cells" link of the BAMS menu. The

neurons concepts are also in XML pages, more specifically in the Swanson

1998 page.

 

CNU stands for "Cerebral nuclei" and is defined in rat nomenclature

Swanson 2004 (also used by ABA), and not for "unspecified". Please check

BAMS for its definition

(http://brancusi.usc.edu/bkms/brain/show-braing2.php?aidi=12109 , click on

button "More" for its definition), or please find it in XML page

Swanson-2004.

Paxinos/Franklin nomenclature does not have this term. Instead it has
"forebrain",

"midbrain", "hindbrain". The hierarchical organization of Paxinos/Franklin

was made by us, and therefore you will not find it in the atlas.

 

Mihai

 

On Fri, 2 Mar 2007, William Bug wrote:

 

> 

>          +++++++===========        NEURONAL CELL TYPES
===========+++++++

> 

> Chris is correct - the MOST LIKELY shared community ontology to

> address the issue of cells would be the Cell Ontology, though in its

> currently distributed form - see (http://www.berkeleybop.org/

> ontologies/#mappings) - it's very problematically both ontologically

> and in terms of what a neuroanatomist and cellular neurobiologist

> would want.

> 

> This brings us to a particular problem with the GENSAT AND the

> BrainPharm/SenseLab cell types - relating to shared cell type

> ontologies.  It's POSSIBLE the GENSAT folks started with the Cell

> Ontology.  Some of their cell terms are in there.  It's even more

> likely this is something they grew themselves.  This is most

> definitely true for many of the cell "sub types".

> 

> The Cell-Centered Database (CCDB) has done A LOT of work on this

> issue.  It would really be a terrible waste if this is not being

> included in whatever work is going on amongst the CL Ontology folks

> and GMOD folks - at least in the domain of neuronal cells.  It's

> quite likely some form of the CCDB work is available in OWL.  I've

> cc'd Maryann & Stephen who've been working on CCDB ontologies.  They

> could answer that question.

> 

> With BrainPharm - at least as I understand it (Luis Marenco and/or

> Kei of Yale would be best suited to answer this) the "cell types"

> they create have been based both on the wealth of knowledge Gordon

> Shepherd brings to this issue of neuronal cell types (at least as a

> core organizing principle).  This - possibly with input from some

> shared, distilled knowledge resources such as MeSH (as Don says) has

> then been built out by the 1000s of cellular neurobiologists who've

> contributed to the the SenseLab database - very empirically.  To my

> knowledge (Kei & Luis?), they have not tied this into any current,

> shared community ontology for cell types - and I'm certain there are

> real reasons why this is the case.

> 

> 

>          +++++++===========        RODENT BRAIN ATLASES and BRAIN REGION

> SPECIFICATION ===========+++++++

> 

> As for brain regions, this TOO is problematic.  What Gwen states is

> colloquially correct - you will find brain regions specified in

> atlases.  However, primate atlases and rodent atlases do not

> correspond in many areas (this is an ACTIVE area of research and a

> major task for us in BIRN given our mandate to integrate across

> animal models and human clinical neuroimages related to the diagnosis

> and study of neurodegenerative disease).

> 

> Limiting just one sub-species - say the Mus musculus musculus x Mus

> musculus domesticus hybrids that gave rise to most of the inbred

> strains (C57Bl/6, DBA/2, etc.) commonly used to create mouse models

> of disease - recombinant inbred, transgenics, congenics, etc. - there

> are AT LEAST 3 MRI/MRM atlases of the C57Bl/6 brain:

>          LONI - http://www.loni.ucla.edu/MAP/Atlas/

>          Ma et al. - http://www.bnl.gov/ctn/mouse/

>          Mouse Imaging Center (Toronto) -
http://www.mouseimaging.ca/research/

> var_brain_atlas.html

> 

> and AT LEAST 2 histological atlases of the C57Bl/6 brain:

>          LONI - http://www.loni.ucla.edu/MAP/Atlas/Atlas_Archive.html

>          NeuroTerrain -
http://fireball.drexelmed.edu/neuroterrain/tools.shtml

> 

> MRI/MRM atlases are just starting to get under 100 microns in

> resolution (compared to histologic resolution generally 20 - 50

> microns 3D isotropic) and don't have nearly comparable contrast (yet)

> to histological atlases required to perform highly granular region

> segmentation.  This contrast issue is especially true in the deep

> regions of the diencephalon where many regions important to

> neurodegenerative disease reside (s. nigra, n. basalis, striatum, etc.).

> 

> And - guess what - they don't all share the same "terminology" for

> naming those regions they do delineate (see BAMS links below) NOR are

> the regions (the 3D objects) they delineate for a given region -

> e.g., "hippocampal formation" -  geometrically equivalent - NOR do

> they place these geometries in the same 3D coordinate system.

> 

> I realize it must seem I'm getting into too much technical detail

> here - BUT- IF the goal is to make MEANINGFUL connections via SPARQL

> queries, this sort of behind the scenes "sausage making" issues are

> very important issues.

> 

> For primate brain regions, the SMARTEST source for a shared

> "terminology" is NeuroNames.  As I've mentioned before, this MIGHT be

> available in RDF or OWL based on work the BrainInfo/NN PI - Doug

> Bowden has done with Jack Park at SRI (I've cc'd Jack on this

> email).  Many names from other species are in there (though not in

> the downloadable versions of NN which are CIRCA 2002).  There is a

> knowledgeable - the Brain Architecture Managment System (BAMS) from

> Larry Swanson's lab which is curated by Mihail Bota - which makes

> available in XML format (don't know what the XSD is) the brain region

> specifications for several STANDARD rodent brain atlases.  You'll

> find these by navigating from the BAMS home page (http://

> brancusi.usc.edu/bkms/) to the 'XML' link:

>          http://brancusi.usc.edu/bkms/bamsxml.html

> 

> I would note the ABA uses the Franklin & Paxinos altas (2001).

> 

> HOWEVER - there are many regions in your spread sheet that are not in

> the BAMS Franklin&Paxinos download - for instance "CNU" - which may

> actually be a home-grown term for "CNS - unspecified".  Isn't that

> special.  Here's why that might be.  Go to the NN/Braininfo page for

> one of the regions the ABA classifies as "CNU" such as striatum:

>          http://braininfo.rprc.washington.edu/Scripts/

> hiercentraldirectory.aspx?ID=207

> Click on the "Where is it in the brain?" link.

> You will note Striatum, Globus Pallidus, and Amygdala are listed as

> being in the "Basal Ganglia".  Leaving the Amygdala aside, certainly

> in humans, the Striatum & Globus Pallidus (two regions critical to

> the PD Use case, BTW) are considered to be in the Basal Ganglia.

> In rodents - especially in mice - this classification is very

> problematic.  You won't get any two mouse neuroanatomists to TRULY

> agree on all the details, however, there is a generally accepted

> region that sort of subsumes the same entity (based on various

> histological means of defining structural boundaries as well as other

> means such as structure-function, phylogenetic, and ontogenic

> relations) called the "caudoputamen" by most (if you drill into

> Striatum on BrainInfo, you'll find the Striatum has_part Caudate

> Nucleus.  Caudoputamen IS NOT equivalent to the "Basal Ganglia", but

> it is probably correct to say it is ANALOGOUS to what in a primate

> would be the Putamen and the Caudate Nucleus.

> ABA may just have thrown up there hands and said - given their high-

> throughput directive - no one seems to agree on this issue, so lets

> be careful not to make an assertion that entails committing to an

> issue where there is disagreement.  Let's just call Striatum "CNS

> Unspecified".

> Having said this, there is a Caudoputamen in ABA and it's classified

> as "Striatum dorsal Region (STRd).

> 

> I would guess Mihail, Maryann, and others would be able to give you a

> better explanation of the how to address these difficult issues of

> anatomical region correspondence between rodent brain image sets

> (GENSAT, ABA) and atlases (Franklin & Paxinos, NeuroTerrain, Ma et

> al., etc.).

> 

> Hope this helps some.

> 

> Cheers,

> Bill

> 

> 

> On Mar 2, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Chris Mungall wrote:

> 

> >

> >

> > Umm, the OBO Cell ontology? There are a few ontological issues with

> > OBO-Cell right now, but these are currently being addressed. There

> > are also efforts within OBO to link cells with the brain regions

> > they are part of, although these are currently focused on model

> > organisms.

> >

> > On Mar 2, 2007, at 8:13 AM, Donald Doherty wrote:

> >

> >>

> >> Alan,

> >>

> >> The region names are all available in the MeSH...would that give

> >> you the

> >> taxonomy you need? I don't know of a similar source for cell types.

> >>

> >> Don

> >>

> >> -----Original Message-----

> >> From: Alan Ruttenberg [mailto:alanruttenberg@gmail.com]

> >> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2007 3:21 AM

> >> To: Bill Bug; kc28 Cheung; June Kinoshita; Gwen Wong; Donald Doherty

> >> Cc: public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org

> >> Subject: cell types, brain regions mentioned in gensat

> >>

> >> I'm making progress in converting gensat to rdf.

> >>

> >> For mapping considerations, here is the list of cell types mentioned

> >> in gensat, followed by the list of brain regions. If we are going to

> >> do cross queries we will need to find standard names for these. Bill,

> >> are these classes in birnlex? If not, we need to spawn a task to

> >> identify a vocabulary we will use for these.

> >>

> >> Note that we get a region<->neuron association via gensat where they

> >> annotation both a region and a cell type.

> >> Note also some amusements, like the presence of lung as region in an

> >> ostensibly CNS database.

> >>

> >> I've also attached the "ontology.csv" from the Allen Brain Explorer

> >> application, which I presume gives their hierarchy of brain regions/

> >> subregions. I've put labels on the first 3 columns which I think

> >> encode the hierarchy.

> >>

> >> The other interesting annotations, are the gene, the location,

> >> orientation, and size of the image, as well as some broad categories

> >> of qualitative expression, such as whether it is localized of widely

> >> expressed. There is also gender and a few categories of age.

> >>

> >> There are ~60K images in gensat.

> >>

> >> BTW, if someone has a theory of what the other number in ontology.xls

> >> are, I'm all ears.

> >>

> >> -Alan

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >>

> >

> >

> 

> Bill Bug

> Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

> 

> Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics

> www.neuroterrain.org

> Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy

> Drexel University College of Medicine

> 2900 Queen Lane

> Philadelphia, PA    19129

> 215 991 8430 (ph)

> 610 457 0443 (mobile)

> 215 843 9367 (fax)

> 

> 

> Please Note: I now have a new email - William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu

> 

> 

> 

> 

>