The Development Cell Atlas - Data Coordination Centre

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The Human Cell Atlas is developing a blueprint to better understand how cells function in normal life and in diseases; a foundational dataset which is part this initiative is the Developmental Cell Atlas. By understanding how cells function in normal tissues and how they change over time during development we provide an atlas which researchers can use to better understand how different cell types emerge in vivo and how things go wrong in diseased tissues. The data and knowledge generated can be used to design new drugs, to repurpose drugs and to detect diseases earlier as we can see when normal processes change before diseases can be diagnosed. In order to maximise the impact of the Developmental Cell Atlas the data generated should be collected, versioned and made available to the research community, both academic and industrial. This is a big data problem and needs tools that are able to collect and share genetic data and images, databases that can store these data and preserve it for years and tools to ensure that the results from the data can be used in different ways, such as drug development and basic academic research. This proposal provides the necessary infrastructure to collect, share and preserve the data, respecting the ethical constraints on the data and enabling the wide community of researchers to access the data. The standards, tools and services generated during this project will also be provided to the research community and portable and use cloud technologies meaning they can use the latest techniques for accessing data anywhere in the world.