Development and application of a neuroinformatics environment for neuroscience and neuroethology

Insect brains are excellent models for analyzing neuronal function in moderately complex central nervous systems due to the vast potential they offer for revealing the intricate details of the workings of a biological neural network. For a systematic approach to understanding neuronal mechanisms, it is important to integrate research results from various fields, such as morphology, physiology and immunohistochemistry. We are developing a database system, the Bombyx Neuron Database (BoND) for assembling and sharing experimental and analytical data. The system is designed and developed based on experimental data, mostly obtained from intracellular recordings. A new WWW technology, CMS (Content Management System), was implemented in our system. That is, PHP-based CMS, XOOPS, provides several functions for web-based database management, for instance, user accounting, web page designing and data backup. The BoND was developed by our original database module of XOOPS, in order to deal with electrophysiological and anatomical data. Research resources from various fields are combined in the database for realizing a conjunction of experiments and analysis, which will assist progress in understanding neural network mechanisms as a virtual laboratory.