The continuation of the UCLA NINDS/NIMH Microarray Center as a component of the NINDS/NIMH Microarray Consortium will be a broad based resource of services, knowledge, and data for the neuroscience community to facilitate performance of microarray based experimentation and the archiving of useful microarray documentation and gene expression information. Through the first two years of operation of the Consortium, the three funded sites have created an integrated set of three centers with complementary expertise and services. The services have been well received by the individual users of the consortium, with high marks on quality of the experimentation. We propose to continue to adapt to community needs, provide knowledgeable guidance, and offer an outstanding cost-effective service to NINDS/NIMH funded investigators. The services offered through the Consortium are focused on the analysis of large scale gene expression. Neuroscientists can be frustrated in their efforts to access this powerful technology due to 1) high cost of services;2) limited access to the technologies as they become available;3) limited access to expert advice;and 4) limited access to powerful and flexible analytical tools. The UCLA proposal, in conjunction with the other two currently funded centers, serves to lower all of these barriers and provide ready access. Through judicious overlaps between the centers, redundancies are minimized, and backup and flexibility are built into the overall consortium. The proposed renewal of the UCLA NINDS/NIMH Microarray Center will be a broadly functioning center working in collaboration with the other funded centers to seamlessly provide a complete array of DNA microarray reagents, services, and data to the neuroscience community. The Center will: 1) Provide guidance and advice on microarray experimentation and facilitate investigator documentation of experimental procedures;2) Provide inexpensive access to DNA microarray services to individual neuroscience investigators;3) Provide custom array synthesis capabilities for microarray experimentation;4) Provide guidance, advice and statistical analytical support for the analysis of microarray data;5) Develop a centralized database of well annotated, cross-referenced, co-normalized expression data with a focus on neuroscience;and 6) Develop and update the integration of the UCLA Site with the NINDS/NIMH Portal.
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