#neurotwitter🎶welcome to the #natverse - we’ve got tools for brains!🎶Open software to analyse neurons, connections, brains #bioRxiv biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Others are using it, why should you? natverse.org: @gsxej lab @MRC_LMB @flyconnectome @CamZoology #rstats 1/10 
e.g. users outside our bubble: @MichaelKunst5 @mpiNeuro, @dddavi @HHMIJanelia, @ScottishWaddell, @EichlerKathi @albertcardona, @neurojeanne, @AlexVrvoo, @tomtom_auer @bentonlab, @neuroluci, @lillvis @dingy05 @David_L_Stern, @lillvis @dingy05 @David_L_Stern 1.5/10
The natverse allows you to easily plot neurons and neuroanatomical volumes, measure features and implement interesting algorithms, e.g. flow centrality @csdashm and NBLAST @martamcosta2 natverse.org/gallery/. We give lots of examples: github.com/natverse/nat.e… 2/10
You should also be able to install the natverse with one line of code from R (natverse.org/install/) and we have a responsive help group: groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/… 3/10
Since ~2003, @gsxej has been developing tools in #rstats to work with neuron data (meanwhile, I was in primary school). Today, thanks to @uni_matrix and @i_am_shri_ you can also interoperate with python 4/10
You can look at a lot, including NeuroMorpho, insectbrainDB.org (@stanley_heinze), FlyCircuit (Ann-Shyn Chiang), MouseLight (@realMouseLight), CATMAID (@tomkazimiers, @clbarnes91, @aschampion), DVID, NeuPrint (@stephenplaza, W. Katz) and NeuroGlancer (@GoogleAI) 5/10
One of the things that set the natverse apart is that it geared to consider neurons registered to whole-brain / sub-region standard templates. This is critical in large-scale mapping projects inc connectomics. You must move data between them to compare datasets 6/10
@jamesdmanton developed ‘bridging registrations’ to unify the standard templates in fly neuroscience, so you don’t need to waste time and energy re-registering different datasets. There is also support for the latest templates from @BogovicJohn and @herrsaalfeld 7/10
This works if you have registered data. An important outcome is that @gsxej and @martamcosta2 registered hundreds of fly brain images to standard template brains, made available at @virtualflybrain. Here’s @SebaCachero ‘s clones (IS2) matched with Chiang lab neurons (FCWB) 8/10
This is super powerful because it allows us to repeatably find the same morphological cell types between different datasets, e.g. linking neurons sparse genetic lines (confocal microscopy) to manual/auto segmentations (flood-filling EM data, @Chinasaurli and @stardazed0) 9/10
We want the community to improve the natverse! Just merged a PR from @RFranconville to read Neuprint ROIs. Future: reading from more online databases, analysis of neurons as 3d meshes and support for other languages, e.g. to play nicely with @HCuntz ‘s MATLAB TREES toolbox 10/10
