The Pros And Cons Of Model Organisms

Model organisms are used by scientists to investigate and test aspects of human biology, and pathobiology, without potentially harming humans in the process. They are defined as a laboratory organism that provides an advantage to experimental research in a biological process, with the expectation it will provide information into the processes in other organisms. However, with gene sequencing becoming much more available in the past 20 years, more species have become accessible to use as model organisms. Researchers can now use organisms with unique/useful genomes, rather than ones that are easy to interpret. Model organisms are used in experiments that are too harmful to perform on humans; however, there are many debates as to whether using

musculus has been sequenced, and the Mouse Genome Database (MGD) produced. This allows scientists to easily find out the specific genotype and phenotype of mice from different strains, meaning highly specific experiments can take place. However, mouse embryos are located inside the mother’s womb, which makes genetic manipulation more difficult than if it were hatched, like an egg. Mice are especially good for medical research; recently, mice have been used to research neurological disorders, such as Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, and aging in humans. Mice have a relatively short life span of, on average, 2-4 years, this means the effects of genetic manipulation on their life span and aging processes can be monitored in short-term research. The majority of cellular functions and structure are similar in humans and mice, as well as larger systems and cardiac function, meaning age-related degression within the body can be modelled accurately in mice. However, mice do not suffer from some of the age-related diseases that humans do, so they have to be genetically induced which is costly and time consuming. Telomeres are essential to the aging process, but in M. musculus are much longer and show higher activity rates than in humans. This makes it more difficult to scale up the results from mice into humans. There are many people in opposition to using mice in research at all, and in order to do so the research process must pass an ethical review before it begins. Designing experiments that are ethically correct increases the time, and sometimes cost, of the whole research