Led by the University of Central Arkansas, a team of researchers from multiple universities has been awarded a grant to develop tools that will help researchers compare and predict brain development across species including humans. Many aspects of human brain development are studied in non-human species such as rats or rhesus monkeys. Yet little data are available on how to convert the timing of brain development from experimental species to humans. Moreover, one research group might study brain growth in hamsters, who are born relatively early in development, and another investigate the same process in guinea pigs, who are ready to leave the nest shortly after birth - leaving each laboratory group puzzled as to how to best relate results from one study to the other. The project: Collaborative Research: A Web-Based System for Modeling and Predicting Neurodevelopment Across Mammalian Species, addresses this cross-species conversion problem employing researchers and students in neuroscience, evolutionary science, computer science, data mining, mathematics and statistics. These researchers produce, maintain and update a unique interactive web-based program that can model, compare and predict brain development across diverse species including hamsters, mice, rats, rabbits, spiny mice, guinea pigs, ferrets, cats, rhesus monkeys, and humans www.translatingtime.net/. They are able to do this because brain development in all species occurs in somewhat similar fixed sequences, allowing us to employ statistics to relate across a database constructed from dates of brain development assembled from the vast published literature. This web program is the only place where this depth of cross species comparative data can be found and easily accessed. The most obvious, and most pragmatic, impact of this web-based interface is that it provides users with predicted dates of brain development for humans where data are unavailable because studies have not been, or cannot be, accomplished. For scientists working with other species, there is direct financial savings when intervals for experimental study can be compared and/or efficiently narrowed because resources, such as number of animals and/or valuable research time, can be significantly reduced. This work also permits research previously accomplished in rats to be equated to current and future studies done in mice, something that is particularly useful at this time because mice are the species currently favored in many studies, but most of the previous brain research was accomplished in rats. There are some brain events that cannot be modeled across all species, but these exceptions actually help us to understand species differences, including some aspects of development that might serve to make humans different from non-human species. Products of this award will be available at www.translatingtime.net/.
