The pituitary gland plays a crucial role in human physiology, and together with the hypothalamus this highly conserved and elegant system form a link between the nervous and endocrine system, by controlling the functions of the thyroid, adrenal glands, and the gonads, and also regulating growth, lactation, and water preservation.

This gland, also called hypophysis, consists of two separate lobes with dual embryonic origin; the anterior (adeno) pituitary gland originates from the oral cavity, and the posterior (neural) pituitary gland develops from the neural plate...Read more

In a recent study published in Proteomics Clinical Applications researchers from the Human Protein Atlas have profiled 280 brain-enriched proteins in cerebrospinal fluid from patients with Alzheimer´s disease, Parkinson´s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. This study is part of a larger effort aiming to expand the knowledge of brain-enriched proteins in human cerebrospinal fluid and to provide novel insight into the relation between such proteins and different neurodegenerative diseases.

The researchers report a multiplexed protein profiling using an affinity-based proteomics approach to generate cerebrospinal fluid profiles of brain-enriched proteins...Read more

This week, the Human Protein Atlas is highlighting a new atlas recently released in HPA 14, The Mouse Brain Atlas. This image from The Mouse Brain Atlas was brought to us by Nadya Petseva, a team member on the project. I know what you're thinking, what's a mouse doing in the "human" protein atlas?!

Though we typically deal with human cells and tissues in the HPA, it is not currently possible to image full human brain at the cellular level, whereas using a mouse brain we can gain key insights into how proteins in the brain function in situ. This makes mice an attractive "model organism" as their brains actually consist of very similar regions to those found in humans...Read more

Today we introduce a new feature on the Human Protein Atlas blog, interviews with scientists involved in the project. First out is Jan Mulder, head of the brain initiative.

– I am a biologist, specialized in neurobiology with a PhD in molecular neurobiology from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands.

In 2004, at the same time that the Human Protein Atlas project was producing its first antibodies, Jan Mulder came as a post-doc to the group of Tomas Hökfeld at Karolinska Institute. In collaboration with Mathias Uhlén and the Human Protein Atlas he began to explore the possibilities to use antibodies raised against human targets on rodent brain tissue...Read more

In the Human Protein Atlas, there are 32 human organs and tissues analyzed. 2489 of the genes have significantly higher expression in one tissue compared to all other tissue types. Analysis show that testis is the organ with the largest number of tissue-enriched genes, with 1057 genes classified as testis enriched. The specific events and alterations of cell structure during spermatogenesis, and the fact that sperm has the ability to survive outside the male body may explain why testis has the largest number of enriched genes.

The organ with the second highest number of enriched genes is the brain with 381 enriched genes...Read more

The mammalian brain is a complex organ composed of many specialized cells, as well as specialized and discretely localized proteins. In a recent study by scientists from the Human Protein Atlas and colleagues, transcriptomics and protein expression data was used to analyze brain-enriched genes from the frontal cortex. Based on transcriptomics analysis of altogether 27 tissues, it was estimated that approximately 3% of all protein coding genes and 13% of the long non-coding genes expressed in the human brain are enriched (having at least five times higher expression levels in brain as compared to any of the other analyzed tissues)...Read more