EURExpress: Gene expression Patterns int he Mouse Embryo by Large-Scale in situ Hybridisation

( Marc Sultan )

EURExpress is a European integrated project involving 12 partners (see Figure), aimed at generating expression data for > 20,000 mouse genes by RNA in situ hybridization (ISH) on sagittal sections from E14.5 wild type C57Bl6 embryos.
A "transcriptome atlas" describing gene expression patterns is being generated using an automated RNA in situ hybridization system (GenePaint), where experimental procedures, data collection and display have been standardized. Images are scanned automatically and annotated centrally (see Figure).

This project allows integration with existing European Projects, such as mouse mutagenesis and mouse phenotyping projects, which critically depend on detailed information on gene expression patterns. For a subset of genes, mainly those directly involved in human diseases, expression data will also be generated by using human and murine tissue arrays. This will offer the opportunity to compare human and mouse expression patterns in adult tissues.

Our laboratory is involved in:
1) Selection of genes and clones
2) Template generation, quality controls and distribution
3) Establishing infrastructure for template data management and storage
4) ISH pipeline

We set up automatic routines for the selection of cDNA clones for all mouse genes and established standard operating procedures for template distribution. Our lab coordinates the flow of templates in cooperation with the TIGEM and generates the genomic metadata files, which are then loaded to the tracking database and in our own database for storage and visualization. Our laboratory aims at producing expression patterns for ~4,000 genes and currently processes routinely 30 genes/week resulting in high-resolution expression data.

All expression data generated by EURExpress are being made readily available to the scientific community via the EURExpress web-linked databases (EURExpress ; GenePaint), considerably advancing our knowledge of gene function and having a significant impact on the identification of gene expression markers of disease processes.