Importance of model organisms? - (Apr/25/2009 )

Hello,

I've tried reading around to understand the importance of model organisms. It may seem obvious at first but sitting down to think about it, there's not much to say about it, or I may be missing some points in my head. If anyone could help me wrap my head around this, it would be very helpful to me!

I've got around a few points:
i) Unification of research (eg. in plants especially with Arabidopsis)
ii) Identification of gene function by homology
iii) Thus, with ii), understanding gene function.

There isn't much more is there? Sounds very much like I'm asking for homework help, but I'm just trying to get my head around a few things.

Thank you.
-WS

The usefulness of model organism is as many people are interested on it, there are a lot of protocols and databases, for this model.

Not only are useful for genetics, for example in pharmacology, rat and mice, are the first choice for try new dugs, so when try on humans, there are not so dangerous.

They are used for study cellular process, becouse the biology for the model organism is well known. But there are many other process ignored, when you study only a cellular process, like signal transduction, for the whole organism,

I do some slides for this topic here, in spanish, inspired on this paper


And here, are a paper discussing the use of model organisms in research.

Felipillo on Apr 26 2009, 11:17 AM said: