Goldstein, B. (2022) Tardigrades and their emergence as model organisms. Chapter in Emerging Model Systems in Developmental Biology, Goldstein B, Srivastava, M., eds. Current Topics in Developmental Biology 147:173-198.
Goldstein, B. (2022) Tardigrades and their emergence as model organisms. Chapter in Emerging Model Systems in Developmental Biology, Goldstein B, Srivastava, M., eds. Current Topics in Developmental Biology 147:173-198.
Goldstein, B. (2022) Tardigrades and their emergence as model organisms. Chapter in Emerging Model Systems in Developmental Biology, Goldstein B, Srivastava, M., eds. Current Topics in Developmental Biology 147:173-198.
Goldstein, B. (2022) Tardigrades and their emergence as model organisms. Chapter in Emerging Model Systems in Developmental Biology, Goldstein B, Srivastava, M., eds. Current Topics in Developmental Biology 147:173-198.
Abstract
Experimentally tractable organisms like C. elegans, Drosophila, zebrafish, and mouse are popular models for addressing diverse questions in biology. In 1997, two of the most valuable invertebrate model organisms to date – C. elegans and Drosophila – were found to be much more closely related to each other than expected. C. elegans and Drosophila belong to the nematodes and arthropods respectively, and these two phyla and six other phyla make up a clade of molting animals referred to as the Ecdysozoa. The other ecdysozoan phyla could be valuable models for comparative biology, taking advantage of the rich and continual sources of research findings as well as tools from both C. elegans and Drosophila. But when the Ecdysozoa was first recognized, few tools were available for laboratory studies in any of these six other ecdysozoan phyla. In 1999 I began an effort to develop tools for studying one such phylum, the tardigrades. Here, I describe how the tardigrade species Hypsibius exemplaris and tardigrades more generally have emerged over the past two decades as valuable new models for answering diverse questions. To date, these questions have included how animal body plans evolve and how biological materials can survive some remarkably extreme conditions.
Keywords
emerging model organisms; tardigrades; Hypsibius exemplaris; evo-devo; survival of extremes; protectants
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
