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Title: You are on a NIH grant panel, and Dr. I. M. Clueless has sent in a great prop Post by: ergo1 on Apr 29, 2011 You are on a NIH grant panel, and Dr. I. M. Clueless has sent in a great proposal to study the human disease sickle cell anemia. However, he wants to perform his study on opossums because he feels they are good organisms upon which to model vertebrate diseases. Using the characteristics of model organism as a basis, explain to Dr. Clueless what organism would be a better vertebrate model to use.
Title: Re: You are on a NIH grant panel, and Dr. I. M. Clueless has sent in a great prop Post by: bio_man on Apr 29, 2011 Model organisms should have relatively small genome, should reproduce fast, and should be easily to handled in a lab. An opossum or a pig is certainly not a good model organism, primarily because they are marsupials and because of their size, respectively. Generally, some of these features, especially at the molecular level, are true of all known living forms. For others there is some variation between large groups of organisms.
Mus musculus, the house mouse, the model organism for vertebrates. It has been studied to compare the genetic basis of vertebrate and invertebrate development as well as to explore the genetics of antigen-antibody systems, of maternal-fetal interactions in utero, and in understanding the genetics of cancer. Dr. I. M. Clueless is technically using an animal that is mainly endemic to North America, and so using it could, in turn, decrease its numbers (decrease their population in the wild). Mice, on the other hands, are more common than human (;)), so decreasing their numbers isn't much of an issue. Does this make sense? Reply back if you need further assistance or mark it as solved. |