The Mary Lyon Centre at MRC Harwell will act as the central hub of the Network, sharing access to specialist facilities, resources, data, and training with all other Network members, and is receiving £5.5 million to support this role. The partnerships established by the Network will enable integration of basic science research with clinical findings in order to accelerate our understanding of human disease and translation to patient benefit.
MURIDAE (Modalities for Understanding, Recording and Integrating Data Across Early life) is one of seven cluster themes and will be led by Prof Anthony Isles at the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University. Dr Michael Ashby from University of Bristol’s School of Physiology, Pharmacology & Neuroscience is a member of the cluster which is receiving £2.7 million of MRC investment. It aims to establish new approaches for studying the early postnatal period in mouse models of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disease. The key to this will be linking changes in behaviour in early life with changes in brain development through integration of home-cage behavioural monitoring data with measures of brain structure and physiology, all guided by clinical partners to ensure relevance to human disease.