Current techniques for three-dimensional (3D) optical microscopy (deconvolution, confocal microscopy, and optical coherence tomography) generate 3D data by "optically sectioning" the specimen. This places severe constraints on the maximum thickness of a specimen that can be imaged. We have developed a microscopy technique that uses optical projection tomography (OPT) to produce high-resolution 3D images of both fluorescent and nonfluorescent biological specimens with a thickness of up to 15 millimeters. OPT microscopy allows the rapid mapping of the tissue distribution of RNA and protein expression in intact embryos or organ systems and can therefore be instrumental in studies of developmental biology or gene function.

The manuscript describes the “digital transcriptome atlas” of the developing mouse embryo, a powerful resource to determine co-expression of genes, to identify cell populations and lineages and to identify functional associations between genes relevant to development and disease.

The BioMart Community Portal (www.biomart.org) is a community-driven effort to provide a unified interface to biomedical databases that are distributed worldwide. The portal provides access to numerous database projects supported by 30 scientific organizations. It includes over 800 different biological datasets spanning genomics, proteomics, model organisms, cancer data, ontology information and more. All resources available through the portal are independently administered and funded by their host organizations. The BioMart data federation technology provides a unified interface to all the available data. The latest version of the portal comes with many new databases that have been created by our ever-growing community. It also comes with better support and extensibility for data analysis and visualization tools. A new addition to our toolbox, the enrichment analysis tool is now accessible through graphical and web service interface. The BioMart community portal averages over one million requests per day. Building on this level of service and the wealth of information that has become available, the BioMart Community Portal has introduced a new, more scalable and cheaper alternative to the large data stores maintained by specialized organizations.