Articles tagged Model Organisms
(72 results)

Today’s guest post was contributed by Andreas Prokop, of the University of Manchester. Along with research on the cell biology of neurons during development and ageing, he is engaged in many science communication and outreach projects. Follow him on Twitter: @Poppi62 More than a century of intense research with the fruit fly Drosophila has arguably turned…

Male Drosophila fruit flies perform an elaborate ritual when they court a female. The male first turns towards the female, follows her, taps her, vibrates his wings to produce a species-specific song, licks her genitalia, curves his abdomen toward her and, if all goes well, the pair finally copulate. These complex routines may help flies…

Fruit flies suffer from an image problem. Maybe it’s the alliteration in the name, or the association with bananas, but Drosophila have become a go-to target for politicians looking to ridicule wasteful public spending. In February, presidential candidate and US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) questioned the NIH for spending: “…a million dollars trying to determine…

In this month’s editorial, the Editors of GENETICS invite submissions of human genetics research articles. To kick off the journal’s call for papers, the October issue features an article by Brooks and Wall et al. identifying the cause of a single-family disorder and a commentary by Phil Hieter and Kim Boycott on the power of model organisms…

The medaka, or Japanese rice fish, is a century-old genetic model on the rise again. Long studied by scientists in Japan, it has been rediscovered by the wider research community over the last decade as a flexible tool for vertebrate genetics. Part of the appeal is the medaka’s amenability to inbreeding. In the latest issue…

Coral reefs around the world are “bleaching”, a threat caused by breakdown of the symbiosis between the coral animals (cnidaria) and the dinoflagellate algae that live within their cells. Yet this crucial symbiotic partnership is poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, biologists are developing a suite of genomic tools for the sea anemone Aiptasia. This…