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Concept
History of model organisms
Summary
The history of model organisms began with the idea that certain organisms can be studied and used to gain knowledge of other organisms or as a control (ideal) for other organisms of the same species. Model organisms offer standards that serve as the authorized basis for comparison of other organisms. Model organisms are made standard by limiting genetic variance, creating, hopefully, this broad applicability to other organisms.
The idea of the model organism first took root in the middle of the 19th century with the work of men like Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel and their respective work on natural selection and the genetics of heredity. As the first model organisms were introduced into labs in the 20th century, these early efforts to identify standards to measure organisms against persisted. Beginning in the early 1900s Drosophila entered the research laboratories and opened up the doors for other model organisms like Tobacco mosaic virus, E. coli, C57BL/6 (lab mice), etc. These organisms have led to many advances in the past century.
Some of the first work with what would be considered model organisms started because Gregor Johann Mendel felt that the views of Darwin were insufficient in describing the formation of a new species and he began his work with the pea plants that are so famously known today. In his experimentation to find a method by which Darwin’s ideas could be explained he hybridized and cross-bred the peas and found that in so doing he could isolate phenotypic characteristics of the peas. These discoveries made in the 1860s lay dormant for nearly forty years until they were rediscovered in 1900. Mendel’s work was then correlated with what was being called chromosomes within the nucleus of each cell. Mendel created a practical guide to breeding and this method has successfully been applied to select for some of the first model organisms of other genus and species such as Guinea pigs, Drosophila (fruit fly), mice, and viruses like the tobacco mosaic virus.
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