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The age of model organisms

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 5, pages 69–76 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Nineteenth-century biology embraced the complexity and variety of living things. In the twenty-first century, biologists have returned to these attributes of life with functional and comparative genomics. We could not have done so without the intense study of 'genetically domesticated' model organisms in the twentieth century. The focus on the universality and simplicity of biological systems promoted by these studies is now fading, together, arguably, with the importance of model organisms themselves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, University of California, Irvine, 92697, California, USA

    Rowland H. Davis

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FURTHER INFORMATION

Model organisms databases

Report on the NIH Model Organism Database Workshop

Glossary

ACCESSORY CHROMOSOMES

Apparently inert, dispensable chromosomes, often called B chromosomes, found in certain races of plants and animals.

APOPTOSIS

Programmed cell death.

ASCOSPORE

A black, thick-walled spore that encloses a haploid nucleus resulting from meiosis in ascomycetous fungi.

ASCUS

A long sac, containing meiotic products (ascospores), which develops following fusion of nuclei of opposite mating type in Ascomycetes.

CELL THEORY

The theory that all living things are cells or aggregations of cells.

CONJUGATION

In bacterial gene exchange, the process of cell-to-cell contact, followed by the linear transfer of all or part of the bacterial chromosome or a plasmid from a donor to a recipient cell.

CYTOGENES

Hypothetical self-replicating, heritable particles that are located in the cytoplasm. Some researchers have proposed that they are autonomous, others that they depend on nuclear genes for their maintenance, and still others that they are copies of genes in the nucleus.

EXPRESSIVITY

The intensity of expression of a mutation in individuals carrying it.

GENE CONVERSION

A non-reciprocal process in which a gene is replaced by its homlogue during meiosis.

HETEROKARYON

In fungi, a mycelium (network of filamentous cells) that contains two or more genetically different nuclear types.

HETEROSIS

A greater fitness of a heterozygote carrying different alleles of the same gene from either of the two corresponding homozygotes.

INTRAGENIC COMPLEMENTATION

The ability of different mutant alleles of the same gene, carried by a heterozygote or heterokaryon, to cooperate to yield a normal or partially normal phenotype.

LYSOSOME

An intracellular compartment of eukaryotic cells in which many macromolecules a re digested.

MACRONUCLEUS

In ciliates, a large nucleus that forms after conjugation as a result of fragmentation and endoreduplication of DNA. It directs the functions of the cell and might change over several generations through loss or amplification of individual groups of genes.

ONE GENE, ONE ENZYME

The view that the specificity of an enzyme is imparted by information in a single corresponding gene.

PARASEXUALITY

The processes by which haploid nuclei of a fungal heterokaryon could fuse and, without undergoing meiosis, yield recombinants.

PARTHENOGENESIS

The development of embryos from unfertilized eggs.

PENETRANCE

A measure of the proportion of genetically similar individuals that show any phenotypic manifestation of a gene that they have in common.

PHYLOGENY

The evolution of organisms by descent from common ancestors.

PLEIOTROPY

The action of a single gene on two or more distinct phenotypic characters.

PSEUDOALLELISM

A term used previously for mutant alleles that failed to complement with one another in heterozygotes, but nevertheless could recombine with one another during meiosis. The term reflected the conflict with the classical picture of alleles, which, it was assumed, could do neither.

SUPPRESSOR MUTATION

A mutation that masks the expression of a non-allelic gene (or mutation) in the same nucleus.

SYSTEMS BIOLOGY

A field, the goal of which is a fully predictive model of cell or organism function, development and behaviour. The area uses gene, RNA and protein microarrays, metabolic determinations, and measurements at other levels of organization over a large range of perturbations. The models would describe the redundancy, modularity and connectivity of function at all levels.

TETRAD ANALYSIS

Isolation and phenotypic analysis of the four products of meiosis of a single meiotic cell.

TRANSDUCTION

The transfer of bacterial genetic material from one cell to another through a bacteriophage protein coat or as part of a bacteriophage DNA.

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Davis, R. The age of model organisms. Nat Rev Genet 5, 69–76 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1250

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