December 14, 2018

Sage’s Synapse Platform Key to Data Coordination for PsychENCODE Consortium

Sage’s Synapse Platform Key to Data Coordination for PsychENCODE Consortium

Image description: Cover image on the Dec. 14, 2018, issue of the journal Science features a neon illustration of a brain. The headline is 'Illuminating The Brain.'
COVER The human brain is the product of myriad molecular and genetic interactions. Here, a neon brain illustration represents individual genetic variability, some of which may lead to disease (denoted by dim or dark segments), as investigated by the PsychENCODE Consortium. This issue sheds light on neurogenetic and epigenetic variation in developing and adult neurotypical brains, as well as in schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and bipolar disorder.
The journal Science today published a special issue, featuring a series of papers from the PsychENCODE consortium.
The PsychENCODE consortium is a NIMH-funded set of grants across 15 institutions that focus on generating genomic and epigenetic data from postmortem brain tissue of individuals diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders, developing brains, and cellular model systems. Consortia members share data and insights with each other and the greater research community. Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit biomedical research and technology development organization founded in Seattle in 2009, functions as the data coordination center for the consortium, using its Synapse platform to share and release data to qualified investigators in the research community. 
 

Synapse tracks collaborative analysis across the PsychENCODE distributed teams, allowing each team to work on the same set of files and to broadcast their research findings in a transparent, reproducible manner. Synapse’s human data governance controls allow the distribution of sensitive human data directly to the broader research community. The PsychENCODE DCC at Sage Bionetworks is responsible for coordinating the upload of data to Synapse from each research project according to grant milestones, and for making the data available according to the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) principle


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