MODEL ORGANISMS USED IN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY OR MEDICAL RESEARCH

Abstract

A model organism is a non-human species that is studied to understand specific biological phenomena with the expectation that investigations made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. The model organisms are widely used to explore potential causes and treatments for human as well as animal diseases when experiments on animals or humans would be unfeasible or considered less ethical. Studying model organisms may be informative, but care must be taken when generalizing from one organism to another. Often, model organisms are chosen on the basis that they are amenable to experimental manipulation. When researchers look for an organism to use in their studies, they look for several traits. Among these are size, generation time, accessibility, manipulation, genetics, conservation of mechanisms and potential economic benefit. As comparative molecular biology has become more common, some researchers have sought model organisms from a wider assortment of lineages on the tree of life. There are many model organisms, such as viruses (e.g., Phage lambda virus, Tobacco mosaic virus, etc.), bacteria (e.g., Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Vibrio fischeri, etc.), algae (e.g., Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Emiliania huxleyi, etc.), molds (e.g., Aspergillus nidulans, Neurospora crassa, etc.), yeasts (e.g., Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Ustilago maydis, etc.), higher plants (e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Lemna gibba, Lotus japonicus, Nicotiana tabaccum, Oryza sativa, Physcomitrella patens, Zea mays, etc.) and animals (e.g., Caenorhabditis elegans, guinea pig, hamster, mouse, rat, cat, chicken, dog, frog, Hydra, Drosophila melanogaster fruit fly, fish, etc.).