Model organisms for human disorders

Abstract

Given the physical and ethical problems involved in performing experiments on humans, model organisms are vital for our understanding of human biology and disease. Animal models in genetically tractable organisms are indispensible tools for the analysis of the pathogenesis and the development of therapeutic avenues in many human diseases. With the increasingly available number of genomic sequences for multiple organisms spanning the evolutionary tree it is now possible to use comparative genomics to build or select better animal models and to facilitate gene discovery. In addition, for many well-established model systems abundant genetic tools are available.