Fundamental biological knowledge and the technology to acquire it
have been immeasurably advanced by past efforts to understand and
manipulate the genomes of model organisms. Has the utility of
bacteria, yeast, worms, flies, mice, plants, and other models now
peaked and are humans poised to become the model organism of the
future? The Genetics Society of America recently convened its 2006
meeting entitled ‘‘Genetic Analysis: Model Organisms to Human
Biology’’ to examine the future role of genetic research.
(Because of time limitations, the meeting was unable to cover the
substantial contributions and future potential of research on model
prokaryotic organisms.) In fact, the potential of model-organism-
based studies has grown substantially in recent years. The genomics
revolution has revealed an underlying unity between the cells and
tissues of eukaryotic organisms from yeast to humans. No uniquely
human biological mechanisms have yet come to light. This common
evolutionary heritage makes it possible to use genetically tractable
organisms to model important aspects of human medical disorders such
as cancer, birth defects, neurological dysfunction, reproductive
failure, malnutrition, and aging in systems amenable to rapid and
powerful experimentation. Applying model systems in this way will
allow us to identify common genes, proteins, and processes that
underlie human medical conditions. It will allow us to systematically
decipher the gene–gene and gene–environment interactions that
influence complex multigenic disorders. Above all, disease models
have the potential to address a growing gap between our ability to
collect human genetic data and to productively interpret and apply
it. If model organism research is supported with these goals in
mind, we can look forward to diagnosing and treating human disease
using information from multiple systems and to a medical science
built on the unified history of life on earth. |
