What’s so special about model organisms?

Ankeny, Rachel A.; Leonelli, Sabina

doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2010.11.039

Cited by 306 publications

(152 citation statements)

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“…Based on the timing of these increases in publication rates, it is clear that many of these have been more successful in terms of publications after being named as formal model organisms by NIH. In the case of Arabidopsis, this may be the result of an infusion of funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which has allowed the development of numerous resources essential to supporting model organism research, such as cyberinfrastructure and strain centers (see below for further discussion, and Leonelli 2007a,b; Leonelli and Ankeny 2011;Leonelli and Ankeny 2012;Leonelli and Ankeny 2013).…”

Section: Publication Trends For Nih-designated Model Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although in many cases the organism under study was of interest in its own right to those who did research with it, the underlying expectations were that discoveries made in these organisms would be useful or in some sense applicable for understanding other organisms, including humans, or even fundamental mechanisms shared by many or all living entities. (For an overview of this history and of the concept of a model organism, see Ankeny and Leonelli 2011, as well as earlier commentaries in Gest 1995;Ankeny 2001a. ) Some model organisms were selected because a certain subsystem or process was particularly accessible in the given species, such as the development of the nervous system in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (de Chadarevian 1998;Ankeny 2000Ankeny , 2001b; others because techniques and information were already available from previous research work, for example, Drosophila melanogaster (Kohler 1994;Weber 2007), various mouse and rat strains (Rader 2004;Logan 2002Logan , 2005Leonelli et al 2014); and still others such as zebrafish were chosen explicitly to be developed in detail although they had not previously been extensively studied (Grunwald and Eisen 2002).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Publication Trends in Model Organism Research

2014

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In 1990, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave some organisms special status as designated model organisms. This article documents publication trends for these NIH-designated model organisms over the past 40 years. We find that being designated a model organism by the NIH does not guarantee an increasing publication trend. An analysis of model and nonmodel organisms included in GENETICS since 1960 does reveal a sharp decline in the number of publications using nonmodel organisms yet no decline in the overall species diversity. We suggest that organisms with successful publication records tend to share critical characteristics, such as being well developed as standardized, experimental systems and being used by well-organized communities with good networks of exchange and methods of communication.

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Section: Publication Trends For Nih-designated Model Organismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Publication Trends in Model Organism Research

2014

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“…Nevertheless, what constitutes a model organism is not well defined. Ankeny and Leonelli (2011) have suggested that a model organism might be more specifically characterized as one that is representative of a target species at the 'wholeorganism' level. They highlight that 'modern' model organism systems are built upon extensive infrastructure, including germplasm and in silico resources, that is openly accessible to the research community and facilitates diverse research approaches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brachypodium as an emerging model for cereal–pathogen interactions

et al. 2015

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Background Cereal diseases cause tens of billions of dollars of losses annually and have devastating humanitarian consequences in the developing world. Increased understanding of the molecular basis of cereal host-pathogen interactions should facilitate development of novel resistance strategies. However, achieving this in most cereals can be challenging due to large and complex genomes, long generation times and large plant size, as well as quarantine and intellectual property issues that may constrain the development and use of community resources. Brachypodium distachyon (brachypodium) with its small, diploid and sequenced genome, short generation time, high transformability and rapidly expanding community resources is emerging as a tractable cereal model.Scope Recent research reviewed here has demonstrated that brachypodium is either susceptible or partially susceptible to many of the major cereal pathogens. Thus, the study of brachypodium-pathogen interactions appears to hold great potential to improve understanding of cereal disease resistance, and to guide approaches to enhance this resistance. This paper reviews brachypodium experimental pathosystems for the study of fungal, bacterial and viral cereal pathogens; the current status of the use of brachypodium for functional analysis of cereal disease resistance; and comparative genomic approaches undertaken using brachypodium to assist characterization of cereal resistance genes. Additionally, it explores future prospects for brachypodium as a model to study cereal-pathogen interactions.Conclusions The study of brachypodium-pathogen interactions appears to be a productive strategy for understanding mechanisms of disease resistance in cereal species. Knowledge obtained from this model interaction has strong potential to be exploited for crop improvement.

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“…The animals in such models are typically used as proxies or substitutes for humans. Animal models in neurobiological experimentation share many common features with biomedical animal models and other related material biological models such as model and experimental organisms (Ankeny and Leonelli 2011) all of which contain animal organisms or their tissues or organs as their integral parts. Unlike other types of models used in science, models containing animals as substitutes for humans are supposed to be similar to the phenomena they target to represent.…”

Section: Animal Models As Experimental Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating Animal Models

Atanasova

2015

THEORIA

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This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models is well justified. It fosters rather than precludes the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge. The discipline is thriving.Keywords: Animal Models, Calibration, Validity, Reliability, Experimental Neurobiology.RESUMEN: Este artículo responde a un reto reciente: la validez de extrapolar el conocimiento neurobiológico del laboratorio animal a los humanos. Según esta objeción la neurobiología experimental, y por ende la neurociencia, está en crisis porque el conocimiento obtenido en los laboratorios de neurobiología utiliza modelos animales simplificados de las condiciones humanas que difieren de unos laboratorios a otros. Por el contrario, sostengo que mantener una diversidad de protocolos experimentales y de modelos simples está sobradamente justificado. Favorece, en vez de impedir, la validez de la extrapolación de conocimiento neurobiológico. La neurobiología es una disciplina floreciente.

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What’s so special about model organisms?

Cited by 306 publications

References 57 publications

Publication Trends in Model Organism Research

Publication Trends in Model Organism Research

Brachypodium as an emerging model for cereal–pathogen interactions

Validating Animal Models

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