期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2022
卷号：119
期号：30
DOI：10.1073/pnas.2122148119
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：In Darwin’s and Mendel’s times, researchers investigated a wealth of organisms, chosen to solve particular problems for which they seemed especially well suited. Later, a focus on a few organisms, which are accessible to systematic genetic investigations, resulted in larger repertoires of methods and applications in these few species. Genetic animal model organisms with large research communities are the nematode
Caenorhabditis elegans, the fly
Drosophila melanogaster, the zebrafish
Danio rerio, and the mouse
Mus musculus. Due to their specific strengths, these model organisms have their strongest impacts in rather different areas of biology.
C. elegans is unbeatable in the analysis of cell-to-cell contacts by saturation mutagenesis, as worms can be grown very fast in very high numbers. In
Drosophila, a rich pattern is generated in the embryo as well as in adults that is used to unravel the underlying mechanisms of morphogenesis. The transparent larvae of zebrafish are uniquely suited to study organ development in a vertebrate, and the superb versatility of reverse genetics in the mouse made it the model organism to study human physiology and diseases. The combination of these models allows the in-depth genetic analysis of many fundamental biological processes using a plethora of different methods, finally providing many specific approaches to combat human diseases. The plant model
Arabidopsis thaliana provides an understanding of many aspects of plant biology that might ultimately be useful for breeding crops.
