Click here to download the full R notebook for your own use
MapMyCells enables mapping of single cell and spatial trancriptomics data sets to a human middle temporal gyrus (MTG) taxonomy. The taxonomy is derived and presented in “Integrated multimodal cell atlas of Alzheimer’s disease” (https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.08.539485), and we encourage you to cite this work if you use MapMyCells to transfer these labels to your data. It is also used throughout the web tools on SEA-AD.org. This R workbook illustrates a common use case for the MapMyCells facility (https://knowledge.brain-map.org/mapmycells/process/) and follow up analyses. The query data included in this document are from the paper “Conserved cell types with divergent features in human versus mouse cortex ” (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1506-7) from the Allen Institute, which also has a nice data exploration tool (RNA-Seq Data Navigator; https://celltypes.brain-map.org/rnaseq/human/mtg).
This example is run and R, which can be downloaded at CRAN (https://cran.r-project.org/). To run in R, just sequentially copy and paste the relevant code blocks into R. An easier alternative is to download RStudio here (https://posit.co/download/rstudio-desktop/) after downloading R. “.Rmd” files can be directly loaded into R studio and run.
As an example data set, we will use the a subset of the snRNA-seq dataset published in Hodge, et al. (2019), which has been conveniently packaged into an R library. (To see how one would perform this step from a 10X experiment, see the version of this tutorial for whole mouse brain.)
if(!is.element("hodge2019data",.packages(all.available = TRUE))) # Install data package if not already installed
devtools::install_github("AllenInstitute/hodge2019data")
The next component of set up is to make sure your R working directory points to the data you are reading in.
# Uncomment line below and replace bracketed text with path to downloaded files.
#setwd("FILE_PATH")
This workbook uses the libraries anndata, Seurat, and hodge2019data.
# Install Seurat and anndata if needed
list.of.packages <- c("Seurat", "anndata")
new.packages <- list.of.packages[!(list.of.packages %in% installed.packages()[,"Package"])]
if(length(new.packages)>0) install.packages(new.packages)
suppressPackageStartupMessages({
library(Seurat) # For reading droplet data sets and visualizing/comparing results
library(anndata) # For writing h5ad files
library(hodge2019data) # For the query data set
})
## Warning: package 'Seurat' was built under R version 4.2.3## Warning: package 'anndata' was built under R version 4.2.3options(stringsAsFactors=FALSE)
# Citing R libraries# citation("Seurat")
# Note that the citation for any R library can be pulled up using the citation command. We encourage citation of R libraries as appropriate.
With the above libraries loaded, the use case below can now be run.
(If you already have an .h5ad file ready for upload, skip to step 4.)
A common use case for analysis of single cell/nucleus transcriptomics is to collect data from several thousand cells, either though one (or more) ports of a droplet-based scRNA-seq run or using single well per cell SMART-Seq sequencing. After some QC steps, these are then clustered for defining cell types. This section describes how to start from such a data set, transfer labels from human “Human-MTG-10x_SEA-AD” data from the Allen Institute / SEA-AD onto these cells using MapMyCells, and then visualize the results in a UMAP.
With the data library loaded, these are already read in. We just rename for convenience.
dataIn <- data_Hodge2019 # These are the counts
annoIn <- metadata_Hodge2019 # These are the metadata (e.g., cluster assignments)
dim(dataIn)## [1] 36591 3357
This reads in a data matrix with 3,357 nuclei.
The above data has already been carefully QC’ed, and therefore a QC step is unnecessary. However, in a typical experiment a QC step would be needed at this point. For demonstrative purposes, we will define all barcodes with >250 reads as interesting “cells”, but in a real experiment more careful QC is strongly encouraged.
dataQC <- dataIn[,colSums(dataIn)>250]
dim(dataQC)## [1] 36591 3357
This step retains all cells for this example, but in a droplet-based experiment it would typically bring the input library down from a huge number to a more reasonable number.
Now let’s output the QC’ed data matrix into an h5ad file and output it to the current directory for upload to MapMyCells. Note that in anndata data structure the genes are saved as columns rather than genes so we need to transpose the matrix first.
# Transpose data
dataQCt = Matrix::t(dataQC)
# Convert to anndata format
ad <- AnnData(
X = dataQCt,
obs = data.frame(group = rownames(dataQCt), row.names = rownames(dataQCt)),
var = data.frame(type = colnames(dataQCt), row.names = colnames(dataQCt))
)
# Write to compressed h5ad file
write_h5ad(ad,'Hodge2019.h5ad',compression='gzip')
# Check file size. File MUST be <500MB to upload for MapMyCells
print(paste("Size in MB:",round(file.size("Hodge2019.h5ad")/2^20)))## [1] "Size in MB: 73"
If you have trouble accessing or running the previous block, check your Python accessibility in R and consider installing python as shown below. If you use Windows, you may be asked to install git before installing python, which can be accessed here: https://git-scm.com/download/win/.
library(reticulate)
version <- "3.9.12"
install_python(version)
virtualenv_create("my-environment", version = version)
use_virtualenv("my-environment")
These next steps are performed OUTSIDE of R in the MapMyCells web application.

The steps to MapMyCells are as follows:
Let’s now look at the output results from the hierarchical clustering algorithm. We can read this into R using read.csv, but note that the first few lines contain metadata that need to be skipped, and begin with a ‘#’ character.
mapping <- read.csv("Hodge2019_mapping.csv",comment.char="#")
head(data.frame(mapping))

In this taxonomy, MapMyCells maps input cells to the taxonomy at three increasing levels of resolution from coarsest class, to intermediate subclass, and finest supertype. In this human SEA-AD taxonomy there are 3 classes, 24 subclasses, and 139 supertypes.
The file consists of the following columns:
As this data set is previously published, we already know the expected subclasses for each cell. Let’s check how well the mapped and clustered subclass calls match. Recall that we defined metadata as “annoIn” above. (This step will only work if your query data has previously assigned cell types, and may need slight modifications.)
comparison = table(mapping$subclass_name,annoIn$subclass)
heatmap(comparison, ylab = "Mapping", xlab = "Clustering",margins = c(10,10))

There is extremely good agreement, with most of the boxes showing all (red) or none (yellow) of the cells mapped to the same SEA-AD subclass coming from a given Hodge subclass call. (It turns out that the disagreements are largely due to differences in how subclasses are named or how their borders are defined between 2019 and 2023.)
Using the same strategy, we can see how clusters from Hodge et al 2019 correspond to supertypes from SEA-AD.
comparison = table(mapping$supertype_name,annoIn$cluster_label)
heatmap(comparison, ylab = "Mapping", xlab = "Clustering",margins = c(8,8), cexRow = 0.5, cexCol = 0.5)

To do this properly would require more complicated analysis, but the main take-home here is that there is strong correspondence between initial cluster calls and mapping supertype assignments (lots of red and yellow, minimal intermediate colors).
To visualize the mapping results, we need both the mapping results and the original query cellxgene matrix for comparison. If this is not already read in, you can read it in from the anndata object uploaded to MapMyCells.
# Since the query data corresponds to dataQC above, we will call it dataQC again
dataQC_h5ad <- read_h5ad('Hodge2019.h5ad')
dataQC <- t(as.matrix(dataQC_h5ad$X))
rownames(dataQC) <- rownames(dataQC_h5ad$var)
colnames(dataQC) <- rownames(dataQC_h5ad$obs)
Now let’s visualize the mapping results. We will do this by saving the data in a Seurat object with mapping results as metadata, running the standard pipeline for creating a UMAP in Seurat, and then color-coding each cell.
# Create the Seurat object
dataSeurat <- CreateSeuratObject(counts = dataQC, meta.data = mapping)
# Standard Seurat pipeline
dataSeurat <- NormalizeData(dataSeurat, verbose = FALSE)
dataSeurat <- FindVariableFeatures(dataSeurat, verbose = FALSE)
dataSeurat <- ScaleData(dataSeurat, verbose = FALSE)
dataSeurat <- RunPCA(dataSeurat, verbose = FALSE)
dataSeurat <- RunUMAP(dataSeurat, dims = 1:10, verbose = FALSE)
Now let’s make the plot for subclasses!
DimPlot(dataSeurat, reduction = "umap", group.by="subclass_name", label=TRUE) + NoLegend()

Here the data has not been clustered but rather the class assignments are assigned to the data in the UMAP. You can see that cells assigned different mapped types localize in different areas of the plot, suggesting that the label transfer works well. It’s worth noting that Seurat produces different UMAP configurations in different R environments, so your plot may not look exactly like this.
Now let’s repeat this analysis where we color-code UMAPs by supertype after separating cells mapped to different classes.
classes <- unique(mapping$class_name)
p <- list()
for (cl in classes){
datClass <- dataSeurat[,mapping$class_name==cl]
datClass <- NormalizeData(datClass, verbose = FALSE)
datClass <- FindVariableFeatures(datClass, verbose = FALSE)
datClass <- ScaleData(datClass, verbose = FALSE)
datClass <- RunPCA(datClass, verbose = FALSE)
datClass <- RunUMAP(datClass, dims = 1:10, verbose = FALSE)
p[[cl]] <- DimPlot(datClass, reduction = "umap", group.by="supertype_name", label=TRUE) + NoLegend()
}
p[["Neuronal: GABAergic"]]

p[["Neuronal: Glutamatergic"]]

p[["Non-neuronal and Non-neural"]]

Once again, the supertypes shown largely segregate from one another without the need to apply clustering, suggesting this mapping works well even at higher resolutions. Scripts such as this can be used for visualizing and comparing mapping results. It’s worth noting that given how different these subclasses are from one another, viewing the data separately for each subclass or more carefully choosing variable genes would likely result in even better visualizations.
To output the session information we write the command, which is useful for reproducibility, especially for more complex scripts.
sessionInfo()## R version 4.2.2 (2022-10-31 ucrt)
## Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
## Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 19045)
##
## Matrix products: default
##
## locale:
## [1] LC_COLLATE=English_United States.utf8
## [2] LC_CTYPE=English_United States.utf8
## [3] LC_MONETARY=English_United States.utf8
## [4] LC_NUMERIC=C
## [5] LC_TIME=English_United States.utf8
##
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods base
##
## other attached packages:## [1] hodge2019data_1.0 anndata_0.7.5.6 SeuratObject_5.0.0 Seurat_4.4.0
##
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
## [1] Rtsne_0.16 colorspace_2.1-0 deldir_1.0-9
## [4] ellipsis_0.3.2 ggridges_0.5.4 rstudioapi_0.15.0
## [7] spatstat.data_3.0-3 farver_2.1.1 leiden_0.4.3
## [10] listenv_0.9.0 ggrepel_0.9.4 fansi_1.0.5
## [13] codetools_0.2-19 splines_4.2.2 cachem_1.0.8
## [16] knitr_1.45 polyclip_1.10-6 spam_2.10-0
## [19] jsonlite_1.8.7 ica_1.0-3 cluster_2.1.4
## [22] png_0.1-8 uwot_0.1.16 shiny_1.7.5.1
## [25] sctransform_0.4.1 spatstat.sparse_3.0-3 compiler_4.2.2
## [28] httr_1.4.7 assertthat_0.2.1 Matrix_1.6-1.1
## [31] fastmap_1.1.1 lazyeval_0.2.2 cli_3.6.1
## [34] later_1.3.1 htmltools_0.5.6.1 tools_4.2.2
## [37] igraph_1.5.1 dotCall64_1.1-0 gtable_0.3.4
## [40] glue_1.6.2 RANN_2.6.1 reshape2_1.4.4
## [43] dplyr_1.1.3 Rcpp_1.0.11 scattermore_1.2
## [46] jquerylib_0.1.4 vctrs_0.6.4 nlme_3.1-163
## [49] spatstat.explore_3.2-5 progressr_0.14.0 lmtest_0.9-40
## [52] spatstat.random_3.2-1 xfun_0.40 stringr_1.5.0
## [55] globals_0.16.2 mime_0.12 miniUI_0.1.1.1
## [58] lifecycle_1.0.3 irlba_2.3.5.1 goftest_1.2-3
## [61] future_1.33.0 MASS_7.3-60 zoo_1.8-12
## [64] scales_1.2.1 promises_1.2.1 spatstat.utils_3.0-4
## [67] parallel_4.2.2 RColorBrewer_1.1-3 yaml_2.3.7
## [70] reticulate_1.34.0 pbapply_1.7-2 gridExtra_2.3
## [73] ggplot2_3.4.4 sass_0.4.7 stringi_1.7.12
## [76] highr_0.10 rlang_1.1.1 pkgconfig_2.0.3
## [79] matrixStats_1.0.0 evaluate_0.23 lattice_0.22-5
## [82] tensor_1.5 ROCR_1.0-11 purrr_1.0.2
## [85] labeling_0.4.3 patchwork_1.1.3 htmlwidgets_1.6.2
## [88] cowplot_1.1.1 tidyselect_1.2.0 parallelly_1.36.0
## [91] RcppAnnoy_0.0.21 plyr_1.8.9 magrittr_2.0.3
## [94] R6_2.5.1 generics_0.1.3 withr_2.5.2
## [97] pillar_1.9.0 fitdistrplus_1.1-11 survival_3.5-7
## [100] abind_1.4-5 sp_2.1-1 tibble_3.2.1
## [103] future.apply_1.11.0 KernSmooth_2.23-22 utf8_1.2.4
## [106] spatstat.geom_3.2-7 plotly_4.10.3 rmarkdown_2.25
## [109] grid_4.2.2 data.table_1.14.8 digest_0.6.33
## [112] xtable_1.8-4 tidyr_1.3.0 httpuv_1.6.12
## [115] munsell_0.5.0 viridisLite_0.4.2 bslib_0.5.1Learn to download file manifests for female chimpanzee brain data from the BICAN grant. Access primate neuroscience research datasets.
I review the overall BICAN specimen list and get an overview of the available library aliquots and donors.

I’m a scientist doing research on non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees, and I closely follow the efforts by the Human and Mammalian Brain Atlas (HMBA) consortium within BICAN.
I filter down to only specimens from Ed Lein’s - UM1MH130981 grant as I know they fit my focus area. I see that 952 specimens are currently available from the grant.


I’m looking to expand on my current data that is short on female chimpanzee specimens. I set additional filters for species = chimpanzee and sex = female. I see that 6 specimens currently match these criteria.


After reviewing the specimen metadata in the Data Catalog, I decide that they suitable for my purpose and download the metadata and file manifest for offline processing.

It includes 32 files for each library aliquot.

I review the documentation that comes with the file manifest and know how to access the fastq files at the archives.

Using the provided documentation, I access the fastq files at NeMO archive.
Learn to access BICAN consortium data at NEMO Archive using BKP file manifests. Efficiently download large-scale brain research datasets.
Scientists can download a project’s file manifest from its specimens viewer in the BKP’s Data Catalog.
Example: Download the BICAN rapid release file manifest
Archive tools may require adjusting the manifest’s column names and order to access data.

Note: You’ll need to manually add the size column. If there are no known values to fill, populate entries with a hyphen (“-”). Cells must not be empty.
You can then use the manifest in NeMO’s Portal-Client tool. See below for further details.
The Rapid Release in BICAN is the immediate dissemination of high-quality, raw, and initial-processed -omics data (such as single-cell transcriptomics and epigenomics) to the public, typically within one calendar quarter (3 months) of its generation. It enables researchers to begin secondary analyses, develop new computational tools, or validate their own findings against the newest available brain cell maps.
NeMO utilizes specialized Snapshot, Cumulative, and Rapid Release collections to ensure the data released remains accessible and citable as data evolves.
A “Snapshot” collection is the most granular immutable unit of dataset generated at a specific point in time defined by a unique combination of seven criteria: grant, lab, technique, species, subspecimen type, data type, and data use limitation (DUL). A new snapshot collection with a nemo identifier is created for files if the collection defined by the seven criteria was not part of the previous Rapid Release. Additionally, a snapshot collection is generated with a new NeMO identifier each time a Rapid Release occurs when there are new or modified files within that specific dataset. However, if no new data is included for a particular snapshot collection, the same collection identifier from the previous release is linked to the new Rapid Release. Please refer to ‘Diagram 1’ below. The files associated with these collections are packaged as BDBags for standardized data transfer. Each snapshot collection has a dedicated landing page that includes metadata associated with the data in the collection (such as taxa, modality, assay, technique, grant number, protocols, open or restricted data access etc.), a link to the BDBag, a specific data citation, and a link to the parent cumulative collection landing page. The landing page can be identified as a snapshot collection based on the collection name, which includes the prefix “BICAN__Snapshot”. The pages are hosted at assets.nemoarchive.org. To access the landing page for a specific collection in a web browser, append the NeMO identifier (‘col’ or ‘dat’ identifier) to the end of the URL, example: https://assets.nemoarchive.org/collection/nemo:col-7x7snh7.
A “Meta-Snapshot” collection is a specialized snapshot collection used to manage complex multi-modal dataset, such as Multiome datasets (e.g., RNA-seq and ATAC-seq performed on the same cells). These are “collections of snapshot collections” created at a specific point in time. A meta-snapshot collection is a parent for member snapshot collection. Please refer to ‘Diagram 1’ below. Its landing page contains a list of member snapshot collection landing page links, also including a “bag of bag” which is a parent BDBag packaged with child snapshot collection BDBags. The landing page can be identified as a meta-snapshot collection based on the collection name, which includes the prefix “BICAN__MetaSnapshot”. Example: https://assets.nemoarchive.org/collection/nemo:col-myr9nn1, is a multiome meta-snapshot collection landing page containing links to specific RNA-seq snapshot collection and an ATAC-seq snapshot collection generated for Jan, 2026 rapid release cycle. Each snapshot and meta-snapshot collection is a comprehensive aggregate, encompassing all data captured from the initial aliquot submission through the moment of collection generation.
Please refer to the section “Accessing Rapid Release Data” for downloading data associated with snapshot and meta-snapshot collections.
Diagram 1:

A “Cumulative” collection acts as a stable “container” that tracks a specific dataset as it evolves across multiple releases. It represents a “collection of collections”, where the members are all the individual static snapshot collections defined by a unique combination of seven criteria produced over various Rapid Release cycles. Please refer to ‘Diagram 2’ below. Unlike snapshot collection NeMO identifiers, cumulative collection identifiers don’t change as new Rapid Releases occur. The cumulative collection landing page provides a chronological list of individual static snapshot collection landing page links. They provide a persistent entry point for researchers to find the most current version of a dataset or view its history. They don’t contain BDBag links but provide links to the HTTPS location for accessing open data or the GCP release bucket path (“gs://”) for restricted data. The pages are hosted at assets.nemoarchive.org. To access the landing page for a specific collection in a web browser, append the NeMO identifier (‘col’ or ‘dat’ identifier) to the end of the URL, example: https://assets.nemoarchive.org/nemo:col-afddrzj. The landing page can be identified as a cumulative collection based on the collection name, which includes the prefix “BICAN__Cumulative”.
A “Meta-Cumulative” collection is a specialized cumulative collection that tracks the multi-modal meta-snapshot collections across multiple releases. It tracks the evolution of the member meta-snapshot collections across various Rapid Release cycles, ensuring that researchers can always find the latest multi-modal data through a single, persistent identifier. Similar to a standard cumulative collection, the meta-cumulative identifier remains constant across releases and don’t contain BDBag links but provide direct links to the HTTPS location for accessing open data or the GCP release bucket path (“gs://”) for restricted data. Please refer to ‘Diagram 2’ below. Example:https://assets.nemoarchive.org/col-iefmnby.
Diagram 2:

A “Rapid Release” collection represents a specific point-in-time snapshot of various datasets i.e., temporal grouping of all data released during a specific window of time. Each rapid release collection is composed of multiple unique static snapshot and meta-snapshot collections generated during that period. A new persistent rapid release NeMO identifier is generated with every rapid release. Each rapid release has a dedicated landing page including links to member snapshot collection landing pages. The landing page does not include a BDBag, nor does it provide HTTPS or GCP release bucket paths. Please refer to ‘Diagram 3’ below.
Diagram 3:


All data collections released through the two Rapid Releases are publicly accessible. All collections from the September, 2024 Rapid Release contain open-access files available for free download. Except for two collections, all other January 2026 Rapid Release collections containing open-access data are freely available for download. The two exceptions contain restricted human fastq files, which can be accessed only upon approval from the NIMH Data Archive (NDA).
Here are the collection NeMO identifiers associated with Sept, 2024 and Jan, 2026 Rapid Releases.
The following options are available for accessing Rapid Release data:
Snapshot and Meta-snapshot collection landing pages:
Snapshot and meta-snapshot collection landing pages (https://assets.nemoarchive.org/api/collection/<nemo_identifier>) provide links to downloadable BDBags (an archive file containing downloadable file paths). To retrieve files, users must install the BDBag software. Detailed instructions for installing the tool and downloading files are available in the BDBag documentation. More information is available here. Each snapshot collection links to a single BDBag that includes a file metadata manifest listing all files available for download along with their associated metadata. A key metadata field in this manifest is the “library_aliquot_nhash_id”, a unique identifier for a library aliquot generated by the NIMP. This identifier can be used to retrieve donor and specimen metadata from the Brain Knowledge Platform’s (BKP) Data Catalog Specimen table and from NIMP via their APIs.
Meta-snapshot collection (eg: multiome) landing pages provide links to a master BDBag (a “bag of bags”). This master BDBag contains individual child BDBags, one for each snapshot collection included in the meta-snapshot. Each child BDBag includes its own file metadata manifest.
Cumulative and Meta-cumulative collection landing pages:
The cumulative and meta-cumulative collection landing pages do not contain links to BDBags but contain HTTPS paths for open access data and GCP bucket path (gs://) for restricted data. Restricted files referenced by GCP bucket paths (gs://) can be downloaded by users only after NeMO grants them access following approval from the NIMH Data Archive (NDA).
Rapid release collection landing page:
Files cannot be downloaded directly from this page. To access the data, users must navigate to each child snapshot collection landing page for accessing the files via a BDBag or NeMO API.
The NeMO API enables users to access and download data associated with grants, projects, subjects, samples (including libraries and aliquots), collections (including publications), and files. Both landing pages and API endpoints support metadata retrieval using NeMO identifiers as well as NIMP NHASH identifiers. API resources are available at https://assets.nemoarchive.org and do not require user authentication. Only publicly accessible metadata are displayed through the landing pages and APIs. Please refer to the detailed documentation on using the NeMO APIs to retrieve collection data.
Files associated with both snapshot and meta-snapshot collections can be retrieved using NeMO API endpoints. For collections containing restricted data, the file endpoints return restricted GCP bucket file paths, however, files can be downloaded only after the user has been granted access to the corresponding bucket. Please refer to the documentation describing the NIMH Data Archive (NDA) approval process for obtaining bucket access through NeMO.
Example 1: Retrieving files associated with a snapshot collection (nemo:col-a06sk1r) using paginated file endpoint
https://assets.nemoarchive.org/api/collection/nemo:col-a06sk1r/files?page=1&page_size=100
Example 2: Retrieving files associated with a meta-snapshot collection (nemo:col-myr9nn1).
The open access BICAN data are released at https://data.nemoarchive.org/. Grant specific data can be accessed by navigating through the data directory structure. The top-level (root) directory is organized by program. Within each program, data are further organized by grant, lab, modality, subspecimen type, technique, species, data type and aliquot name. Please note that the HTTPS location contains files released during the continuous release process (i.e., data automatically released after an embargo period ends). Consequently, some files may not be included in a Rapid Release collection.
Individual files can be downloaded directly from the browser by right-clicking the file and selecting “Copy” or “Save link as.” For downloading via command line, use any online tools that support http downloads such as Wget or cURL. Only cumulative and meta-cumulative collections with open access data are linked with HTTPS file locations.
HTTPS location of BICAN data: https://data.nemoarchive.org/bican/grant/

There are two ways of finding NeMO collection data at Brain Knowledge Platform Data Catalog:
The NeMO collection landing page URLs are linked in each collection listed in “DATA COLLECTIONS” section in the project page - “BICAN Rapid Release Inventory: Single cell transcriptomics and epigenomics”. Click on the “NEMO” links to navigate to the corresponding collection landing pages where you will find links to collection BDBag and HTTPS path for file download. Refer to the document with details on downloading files using a BDBag. Details on accessing files from HTTPS links are in the section “HTTPS location” of this document. Allen Institute’s documentation on finding data for collections is here.

A tutorial on searching the metadata and downloading a file manifest from Specimen Table of BKP’s Data Catalog is posted for users reference here- “Download a file manifest for all female chimpanzees from Ed Lein’s - UM1MH130981 BICAN grant".
The file manifest downloaded from Data Catalog containing the HTTPS file paths can be used as an input into the Portal-Client tool to download the files after reformatting the manifest. Instructions can be found here in the Allen Brain Map Community Forum.
Please email nemo@som.umaryland.edu if you have any issues/suggestions/comments.
Discover how to find AAV vectors for targeting cholinergic neurons in the striatum. Learn viral vector selection for precise cell targeting.
As a scientist doing research on the Basal Ganglia, I’m looking for viral genetic tools that allow me to specifically target cell types in the striatum for an upcoming set of experiments.
I use the Genetic Tools Atlas from the Allen Institute to explore whether Allen scientists have publicly shared suitable tools.
I review the provided experiment metadata. I see that at a glance there are several enhancer-adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) targeting the striatum but also ones for many other brain regions.

I open the filter panel and find the “Coarse Labeled ROI” filters. I scroll down and select the checkbox next to “Striatum“. I see that there are 372 results that match my query.

I apply an additional filter to narrow the data to a fine labeled ROI of “Striatum“ and an observed labeled cell population of “Cholinergic“. I’ve narrowed down my search to 36 highly relevant experiments.


I notice that 2 results use AAVs that were designated as particularly notable, i.e. “Hall of Fame”. I review their EPI & STPT image data. I use Neuroglancer to see how these enhancers are expressed in my regions and cell populations of interest.

Useful Hot-Keys for Neuroglancer:
See the dedicated Neuroglancer documentation for more details.


The expression pattern meets my expectations and I decide to use it in future experiments.
I go to http://addgene.org . I type in the Vector ID “AiP14496“ I received from Genetic Tools Atlas and hit the Search button.

The results return one relevant enhancer:

I click into the enhancer entry to access further details and ordering information.

I explore the other results and find AiP13038 and its related image data. I use Neuroglancer to see how these enhancers are expressed in my regions and cell populations of interest. I note that its Addgene ID is listed directly in the Genetic Tools Atlas.



I go to addgene.org. I type in the enhancer ID “191720“ I received from Genetic Tools Atlas and hit the Search button.

The results return one relevant enhancer:

I click into the enhancer entry to access further details and ordering information.
