A Community Resource for Single Cell Data in the Brain

One major technical challenge for the BRAIN Initiative is the storage and dissemination of large amounts of data collected by different project teams. Hawrylycz and colleagues will support the cell census efforts of the BRAIN Initiative by hosting the BRAIN Cell Data Center (BCDC). Through the BCDC, they will store single-cell data on genetics, histology, electrophysiology, morphology, anatomical location, and synaptic connections from multiple species in a standardized manner. They will also develop and provide training for web-based tools to ease data visualization and analysis efforts. This will facilitate the integration of multiple data streams to better identify and characterize the different cell types in the brain.