Goldstein Bob
Department of Biology and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States.
Curr Top Dev Biol. 2022;147:173-198. doi: 10.1016/bs.ctdb.2021.12.008. Epub 2022 Feb 26.
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.
像秀丽隐杆线虫、果蝇、斑马鱼和小鼠这样易于实验操作的生物是解决生物学中各种问题的常用模型。1997年，人们发现，迄今为止最有价值的两种无脊椎动物模型生物——秀丽隐杆线虫和果蝇——彼此之间的亲缘关系比预期的要近得多。秀丽隐杆线虫和果蝇分别属于线虫动物门和节肢动物门，这两个门以及其他六个门构成了一个蜕皮动物类群，称为蜕皮动物总门。利用秀丽隐杆线虫和果蝇丰富且持续的研究成果及工具，其他蜕皮动物总门的门可能成为比较生物学的有价值模型。但是，当蜕皮动物总门首次被确认时，在这其他六个蜕皮动物总门的门中，几乎没有可用于实验室研究的工具。1999年，我开始努力开发用于研究其中一个门——缓步动物门——的工具。在此，我描述了在过去二十年中，模式缓步动物物种华丽高生熊虫以及更广泛意义上的缓步动物是如何成为回答各种问题的有价值新模型的。迄今为止，这些问题包括动物身体结构如何进化以及生物材料如何在一些极其极端的条件下存活。
