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Welcome to the Synaptic Protein Zoo! Not your average zoo - you’ll find no tigers or giraffes here. At the Synaptic Protein Zoo we’re interested in how molecules in brain cells are organized, and how that influences the communication between them. Sound interesting? Scroll down to learn more!
Learn moreWe want to learn about two different aspects of our images of synaptic proteins. The Cluster Types task involves giving the clusters you see a category according to their shape and orientation. The Cluster Segmentation task consists of finding the best way to draw the shape of the synaptic protein clusters.
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By the numbers
Message from the researcher
It is astonishing how these infinitely small proteins can have such an infinitely large impact on our life. However it is very challenging to characterize these small clusters in depth. We really need your help to analyse our data!
Synaptic Protein ZooAbout Synaptic Protein Zoo
Synapses are where neurons communicate to allow us to think, move and feel. At synapses, neurons send signals to each other using neurotransmitters. The complex mechanisms of neurotransmitter release and reception are controlled by molecules called synaptic proteins. The organisation of these proteins is an indicator of the strength of synapses and is affected by learning and by many neurological diseases.
Using super-resolution microscopy, it is possible to take pictures of synaptic proteins at an incredibly small scale. This allows us to resolve tiny clusters of proteins at synapses, the organisation and shape of which we can study to better understand the mechanisms of synapses at a near-molecular scale. However, the images we take may contain thousands of clusters of multiple proteins. The analysis of this data is therefore quite difficult.
This is where you come in! We need your help to analyse large amounts of synaptic protein clusters. We require information about the association of clusters in synapses, their orientation and their shape. Using crowd-sourced data, we will then be able to train machine learning models to do this work automatically as the amount of available data scales up.
We hope that this project will lead to the development of tools that will allow us to improve our understanding of degenerative brain diseases such as ALS and Parkinson's. The goal is to help achieve earlier diagnosis and treatment of these diseases.