Using Model Organisms to Study Complex Human Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

A model organism is a living species that allows for the study of specific biological problems, and the discoveries may be applied—with a limited number of adjustments—to a wide range of other species. To be defined as a “model”, an organism should also possess additional properties, such as being relatively simple, having the possibility to be established in a number of laboratories, having rapid generation times and a relatively low rearing cost, having stable and easy to recognize phenotypes, allowing to be studied at the “-omics” level, and having the availability of specific tool to study the modification of gene expression, to perform loss- and gain-of-function experiments. Classical model organisms include both prokaryotes (the bacterium Escherichia coli) and eukaryotes, either unicellular (the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, or the numerous human cell cultures used worldwide, especially in cancer research) or multicellular, such as the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the zebrafish Danio rerio, the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the African clawed frog Xenopus laevis, the rat Rattus norvegicus and the mouse Mus musculus. Additional models were developed over time, which are also quite distant from each other on an evolutionary scale to overcome the limitations of working on a simplified model, as correctly noted by Bertile and coworkers in a recent paper (https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-05458-x).

The main aim of studying model organisms is, in most instances, to have a better understanding of human pathologies and unveil potential therapeutic targets. The conservation of basic cellular functions, such as DNA replication and repair, transcription and translation, post-transcriptional regulation, epigenetics and physiology, in fact makes these organisms amenable for studying human disease.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect the most up-to-date research showing the use of model organisms to study human conditions. We welcome the submission of original research and review articles in this field, either using classical and non-classical models, as well as all contributions which provide novel insights into how models have contributed to our understanding of the etiology of and therapeutic approaches to human pathology.

Dr. Roberto Piergentili
Guest Editor

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