Mapping the Brain

I've got a new feature in Wired Magazine on the Allen Brain Institute and their heroic attempts to construct a gene expression map of the human brain. I was most impressed by the way the Institute has "industrialized" the scientific process, as it transforms the artisan model of lab benchwork - in which post docs play with micropipettes - into a high-throughput model, in which massive robots execute most of the actual "science".

The article is now online, but the photographs are pretty stunning