Toward interoperable bioscience data.

To make full use of research data, the bioscience community needs to adopt technologies and reward mechanisms that support interoperability and promote the growth of an open 'data commoning' culture. Here we describe the prerequisites for data commoning and present an established and growing ecosystem of solutions using the shared 'Investigation-Study-Assay' framework to support that vision.

UKPMC: a full text article resource for the life sciences.

UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is a full-text article database that extends the functionality of the original PubMed Central (PMC) repository. The UKPMC project was launched as the first 'mirror' site to PMC, which in analogy to the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, aims to provide international preservation of the open and free-access biomedical literature. UKPMC (http://ukpmc.ac.uk) has undergone considerable development since its inception in 2007 and now includes both a UKPMC and PubMed search, as well as access to other records such as Agricola, Patents and recent biomedical theses. UKPMC also differs from PubMed/PMC in that the full text and abstract information can be searched in an integrated manner from one input box. Furthermore, UKPMC contains 'Cited By' information as an alternative way to navigate the literature and has incorporated text-mining approaches to semantically enrich content and integrate it with related database resources. Finally, UKPMC also offers added-value services (UKPMC+) that enable grantees to deposit manuscripts, link papers to grants, publish online portfolios and view citation information on their papers. Here we describe UKPMC and clarify the relationship between PMC and UKPMC, providing historical context and future directions, 10 years on from when PMC was first launched.

Postnatal dendritic development of Y-like geniculocortical relay neurons.

We describe the dendritic development of neurons in the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGNd) projecting to cortical area 18 in the postnatal cat. LGN neurons were identified by retrograde labeling from area 18 with fluorescent latex microspheres and injected in the fixed slice with Lucifer yellow (LY) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) to visualize their dendritic arborizations. Both topological (measures of the patterns of dendritic branching and their territorial coverage) and metric parameters (measures of the quantitative parameters describing the size, length, extent and diameter of the dendritic arbors) were measured in three-dimensions for 25 LGN neurons in cats between 1 and 18 postnatal weeks. In addition, dendritic growth was compared to the changing dimensions of the LGNd. At all ages, neurons projecting to area 18 have large somata and radiate dendrites. From 1 to 18 weeks neurons increase in size--both soma area and the length of all dendritic segments double during this period. Intermediate and terminal dendritic segments show comparable growth until 5 weeks. However, only terminal segments continue to grow significantly from 5 until 18 weeks. Dendrites become straighter during development, the angle between daughter branches decreases and dendritic segment diameter increases, with terminal segments showing a greater increase relative to intermediate segments. The density of dendritic appendages increases transiently at 5 weeks and a differential redistribution occurs, so that by 18 weeks dendrites further from the soma have a greater density of appendages than those near the soma. Some dendritic relationships remain invariant during development--intermediate segments are always shorter, thicker and straighter than terminal segments. During these changes however, area 18 projecting neurons maintain a constant number of primary dendrites and have, on average, a constant branching pattern. The relative volume of the LGNd occupied by an area 18 projecting neuron increases 2.4-fold between 1 and 18 weeks as the dendrites grow with the result that the coverage of a given point of the LGNd by dendrites of area 18 projecting nearly doubles from 24 to 45 neurons per unit volume. This increased net dendritic overlap provides a substrate for enhanced numerical synaptic divergence of the Y-cell pathway from a point source in the retina to the visual cortex.