Development

Question 1

List the advantages of Thale cress (Arabdopilis Thaliana) as an ideal model organism

Answer 1

• Flowering plant
• small and easy to grow in a petri dish
• Sequenced genome
• Good imaging
• transgenesis (ie have had new genes inserted into them via a vector)

Question 2

State the advantages of slime mould Dicetly .. as an ideal model organism

Answer 2

• Chemotaxis (movement in response to a signal)
• Cyclic AMP mediates this movement.
• cells in plants do not move, plants do not move
• multicellularity

Question 3

State the advantages of Planaraia (flat worms) as an ideal model organism

Answer 3

• Planaria contain lots of adult pluripotent stem cells.
• Ideal organism to study adult stem cells activation
• good imaging
• sequenced genome
• transgenesis

Question 4

Nematode worm ( Caenorhabditis Elegans ) advantages

Answer 4

• Have 2 sexes, have males and hempaphrodites
• Hemaphrodites produce eggs and sperm.
• Very short generation time
• We have learned a lot about programmed cell death from this organism.

Question 5

Amphipod crusteceans

Answer 5

• High regenerative capacity
• Amphipods are Transparent (so ideal for imaging)
• Transgenesis
• sequenced genome
• short generation time

Question 6

Echinoderms

Answer 6

• Echino means prickly
• derm = skin
• most of our knowledge of fertilization has come from echino derms. (think embryo derms? )
• Transparent EMBRYOs

Question 7

What makes Xenopus (clawed frog) such a good model organism

Answer 7

Frog embryos are good experiemntal embryology

Lots of transgenic experiments performed on their embryos

Transparent tadpoles

Embryos develop externally

Embryos produced in large numbers

Easy to make explants and perform transplantations.

Can generate transgenic embros.

Wound healing in embryos can be observed.

Question 8

Drosophila

Answer 8

• good imaging
• sequenced genome
• large numbers of offspring

Question 9

Zebra fish (Danio Rerio)

Answer 9

• Transparent embryos
• external development
• vertebrate
• regeneration capacity
• Genetics, transgenesis, sequenced genome, imaging.

Question 10

Hydra

Answer 10

• small easy to grow
• sexual and asexual reproduction
• High regenerative capacity
• Metazoans
• radial symmetry
• Diploblastic - so have an endoderm and ectoderm

Question 11

Ciona intestinalis

Answer 11

Sea squirt

• transgenesis, sequenced genome, imaging.
• basal chordate.

Question 12

Mus Musculus

Answer 12

Mammal
strong genetics
sequenced genome
pluripotent embryonoc stem cells