Supermodels?

What do a yam, a wasp, and a wallaby all have in common? Well, not much, actually, but they're all being touted as the next big experimental model, according to a new laboratory manual due out in April. The second volume of Emerging Model Organisms, from the linkurl:Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press,;http://www.cshlpress.com/ examines a range of organisms -- some familiar, some not -- that could soon be coming to a lab near you.

Image:Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

linkurl:Richard Behringer,;http://www3.mdanderson.org/public/genedev/public_html/behringer.html an editorial adviser for the book and developmental geneticist at University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, told The Scientist that he hopes the book will help present alternative model organisms that have different strengths than ones currently popular within the scientific community. "Research is dominated by a small number of model organisms," Behringer said, listing the usual suspects (mice, chicks, frogs, etc.) as examples. The book consist of chapters written by researchers using a particular organism in their own lab and includes "some basic protocols and some pointers showing where more detailed information can be found," wrote David Crotty, an executive editor at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, in an e-mail to The Scientist. Each chapter introduces the reader to a model organism and includes background information about related species, genetics, and pointers on how to raise or obtain the organism. The chapter also describes several laboratory procedures using each organism. "Our goal is to continue exposing as many of these systems as possible, creating a resource that provides some quick answers as to the strengths and weaknesses of an unfamiliar system," continued Crotty. Crotty said that he sees this second edition as a continuation of the first, which discussed the viability of using organisms such as bats, butterflies, and snapdragon, and that there are plans for more editions to be released in the future. "Since there are a near-infinite number of interesting experimental questions to be asked," there are a "correspondingly large number of potential model organisms." Behringer, who studies mammalian genetics, said he wanted to make sure that "vertebrates and especially mammals are well represented" in this edition. He helped to select wallabies as models for embryonic development, rabbits as models for mammalian reproduction and early embryology, and the painted turtle as a model for vertebrate evolution, for this edition. In his work, he has used rats and bats, in addition to mice, to aid in understanding embryogenesis. Behringer found that mice had some limitations that other laboratory animals did not have, and he said that other mammals provide "scientifically interesting" data, for example rabbits can be used for antibody production, as well as serving as models for in vitro fertilization. Crotty added that with the cost of sequencing becoming less expensive and technologies improving, more laboratories are choosing organisms that more precisely suit their needs. While the title of the new manual suggests that all the organisms in the book are novel, some are already being used in labs around the world. For example, the wallaby, a small kangaroo-like marsupial, has been thoroughly studied as a model for reproduction and development in its native Australia. However, the concept of replacing Drosophila with wallabies may be unfamiliar to American scientists. However, the wallaby's genome is being assembled, and their importance as a model organism should not be underestimated, according to Behringer. Even the editors of Emerging Model Organisms were fascinated by some of the models proposed. Behringer was intrigued by the Hawaiian bobtail squid, which serves as a model for mutualism (it maintains a symbiotic relationship with a species of bacteria that produces light for the organism), for cephalopod development, and for morphological innovations. Comparisons can be made between the light organ and mammalian eyes, said linkurl:Margaret McFall-Ngai,;http://www.medmicro.wisc.edu/department/faculty/mcfall-ngai.html an animal developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

McFall-Ngai, who is a co-author for the chapter on the bobtail squid, said that she and her colleagues chose to study the organism because the animal-bacteria relationship only involves one type of bacteria. In addition, she said it was a "wonderful lab animal" since it easy to keep and unlike other cephalopods, which stay in constant motion, the Hawaiian bobtail squid is relatively sedentary. Behringer noted that a number of young scientists have grown up watching science and nature programs on PBS and The Discovery Channel. "They've been raised on the diversity of life," he said, adding that similar diversity is not a feature of lab-bound organisms. He said he hopes this will start to change with the publication of texts such as this. linkurl:__Emerging Model Organisms: A Laboratory Manual, Volume 2,__;http://www.cshlpress.com/default.tpl?cart=1269012065106641845&fromlink=T&linkaction=full&linksortby=oop_title&--eqSKUdatarq=858 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY. 2010, 624 pp, IBSN 978-087969865-2, US $89.
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:New Model Org? Cluck cluck;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57210/
[10th March 2010]*linkurl:Modeling with model organisms;http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/54067/
[1st January 2008]*linkurl:Illuminating Behaviors;http://www.the-scientist.com/2003/6/2/S18/1/
[2nd June 2003]

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