At the present time a number of databases and atlases containing data on gene expression in the central nervous system exist; these databases represent outcomes of commercial and/or academic scientific efforts. Thus, information on the specificity of the expression of a particular gene in the brain tissue, in normal and pathological development, is available from searchable databases such as GeneCards, which provides gene-related transcriptomic, genetic/genomic, proteomic, functional and disease information. Some databases contain information on genome-wide expression profiling in a number of human tissues, including the CNS. Besides providing large-scale gene expression data in the brain tissue, these databases generally contain some analytical domains. For instance, they allow the performance of large-scale analyses of tissue-specific gene regulation in human tissues, including the brain (http://bioinfo.wilmer.jhu.edu/tiger), analyses of gene expression patterns among different tissues (http://home.ccr.cancer.gov), and the comparison of gene expression patterns in the brain in normal and pathological development, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, major depression, and schizophrenia (BioExpress® Atlas Reference Data Suite (http://www.genelogic.com).
