Moving past the mouse – genetic advances inspire new frontiers

Recent epic leaps in genetics have created a biodiversity library. As the genetic make-up of animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses has been mapped, researchers racing to develop solutions to today’s global challenges run into a question:

Why be limited to a mouse?

Electric eels, octopi, birds, sponges, and plastic-gobbling bacteria are amongst the new stages on which discovery is unfolding. The challenge is to refine the theater to optimize performance.

In today’s Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Michigan State University evolutionary biologist Jason Gallant presses a case for research – from classrooms and laboratories to funding agencies and patent offices – to take full advantage of a supersized research toolbox.

Conventional research models, most notably mice, frogs, zebrafish, flies, roundworms, and yeast, were go-to models. Their genetic makeup was best understood, they were easy to keep in a laboratory, and scientific communities rallied around them with support and powerful databases. While successes have been robust, more than 80% of potential therapeutics developed via mouse models fail when tested in people. And neither mice nor fruit flies offer tempting pathways to answer questions about environmental or changing climate.

“We have been given amazing tools and opportunities to tailor research models to specific questions,” Gallant said. “These exciting developments mean we have to do things differently – how we train scientists so they can be faster and smarter as they look for discoveries and inventions.”

The nervous system of an octopus may hold answers to controlling prosthetic limbs, and sea sponges have already pointed to life-saving drugs. Birds’ rapid adaptations harbor lessons in coping mechanisms. Bacteria have shown an appetite to “eat” plastic to help clean up oceans.

Relying predominantly on traditional models, Gallant argues, overlooks enormous biological innovation that can be found among the roughly 8.7 million species estimated to be alive today: life has evolved innovations—disease resistance, novel metabolic pathways, unique symbioses— that can offer solutions to urgent problems.

“So many exciting doors have been opened,” Gallant said. “It would be unconscionable not to stride through them to a new future.”

Already at Michigan State University and universities across the country, scientists exploring biodiversity and its potential are creating supportive channels, notably in organizations under the umbrella of ecology and evolution.

“The crowdsourcing of support and wisdom is invaluable in science,” said Professor Elise Zipkin, director of MSU’s Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior graduate program. “Creating multi-disciplinary groups is a great start, but to truly advance discovery and strengthen educating the next generation of scientists, it is crucial that specific investments in infrastructure be made."

Gallant’s Electric Fish Lab explores nervous-system proteins by studying electric eels. He has colleagues across the East Lansing campus with an unconventional army of plants, animals and microbes. They have ‘bottled evolution’ by studying bacteria. Devised innovative solutions to invasive species using lamprey pheromones. Identified how rough-skinned newts produce potent neurotoxins without poisoning themselves.

It's time, he argues, for science to shift with the seismic changes – starting with the silos that often physically separate researchers into different buildings, academic pathways, and different funding streams. A researcher today who chooses to explore with an unconventional model picks a lonelier path as they wrestle with figuring out how to keep the models thriving and affordable.  

“We don’t need to leave the mouse behind,” Gallant said. “We just need to invite the rest of life into the lab.”