Allen Institute

Congratulations to Karl Deisseroth, who sits on Allen Institute's Brain Science Scientific Advisory Council! Karl Deisseroth received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics. We're honored to celebrate with them!

Every brain cell has a family tree. Newly published findings on how one cell becomes many will support research on forebrain development and its disorders.

Researchers at the Allen Institute and UCSF have built the first comprehensive lineage atlas of the newborn mouse forebrain, published today in Nature. By tagging stem cells with unique genetic barcodes at eight points during development, the team traced more than 416,000 cells back to nearly 300,000 distinct lineages across five brain regions, revealing what each cell became, when it was born, and where it ended up.

Some cells are "born together, stay together,” and settle near their birthplace. Other cells are "born together, reared apart,” and migrate widely across the brain. The farthest-traveling neurons are significantly enriched for genes linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions, suggesting these disorders may stem less from one faulty region and more from disruptions to the migration programs that wire circuits across the whole brain. It changes where researchers should look, and potentially where therapies should aim.

Allen Institute alums: Join us on Wednesday, October 7 for our 3rd annual alumni evening. We're excited to welcome you back to 615 Westlake, share news, and reconnect. Don't miss it! RSVP today: https://bit.ly/4z7PF9n

(This event is for current and former employees only)

Twenty years ago, on this day in 2006, Allen Institute for Brain Science announced the completion of our inaugural project: a web-based, 3D map of gene expression in the mouse brain providing scientists with a level of data previously not available.

Could this new brain map help fight diseases like ALS and dementia?

The brain’s motor cortex is as important as it sounds. It plans, controls, and executes voluntary muscle movements like playing catch, chewing food, or writing your name. Our scientists and collaborators have created the most detailed map yet of the mouse motor cortex, identifying 16 distinct subregions with their own patterns of connections.

The findings reveal new precision in how the brain plans and controls movement. Built using 547 experiments and the Allen Institute’s foundational connectivity atlas, the new map shows how motor cortex regions connect with areas involved in movement, sensation, planning, and decision-making.

This precision map gives researchers a shared reference for studying the motor cortex, and could help advance understanding of diseases such as ALS, which destroys cells that send signals to the muscles, and frontotemporal dementia, which damages the frontal part of the brain that dictates personality, behavior, and language.

Meet the 2026 cohort of Next Generation Leaders. This program recognizes emerging early career researchers in bioscience and is designed to foster community, exchange of ideas, innovation, and collaboration to make a broad, transformational impact on the future of science.

Nature has been inventing proteins for billions of years, but it hasn't tried everything. David Baker co-leads AI BioDesign, our new accelerator in collaboration with UW Medicine and Fred Hutch, to design molecules that could break down plastic, target cancer with precision, and switch genes on and off.

Via Jorge Garay for WIRED