Organisms
Dictyostelium discoideum
By Mary E. Sunderland
Dictyostelium discoideum is a cellular slime mold that serves as an important model organism in a variety of fields. Cellular slime molds have an unusual life cycle. They exist as separate amoebae, but after consuming all the bacteria in their area they proceed to stream together to form a multicellular organism. These features make it a valuable tool for studying developmental processes and also for investigating the evolution of multicellularity. Long thought to be a type of fungus, it has recently been shown that slime molds in fact bear no relation to fungi.
Created 2009-06-10
Last modified 4 years 5 months ago
Format: Articles"How do Embryos Assess Risk? Vibrational Cues in Predator-Induced Hatching of Red-Eyed Treefrogs" (2005), by Karen Warkentin
By Karla T. Moeller
In 'How do Embryos Assess Risk? Vibrational Cues in Predator-Induced Hatching of Red-Eyed Treefrogs' (2005), Karen Warkentin reported on experiments she conducted to see how red-eyed treefrog embryos, Agalychnis callidryas, can distinguish between vibrations due to predator attacks and other environmental occurrences, such as storms. Though the ability of red-eyed treefrogs to alter their hatch timing had been documented, the specific cues that induce early hatching were not well understood.
Created 2012-04-07
Last modified 3 years 1 week ago
Format: ArticlesGolden Rice
By Marci Baranski
Golden Rice was engineered from normal rice by Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer in the 1990s to help improve human health. Golden Rice has an engineered multi-gene biochemical pathway in its genome. This pathway produces beta-carotene, a molecule that becomes vitamin A when metabolized by humans. Ingo Potrykus worked at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and Peter Beyer worked at University of Freiburg, in Freiburg, Germany. The US Rockefeller Foundation supported their collaboration.
Created 2013-09-17
Last modified 3 years 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesThe Process of Gastrulation in Frog Embryos
By Chinami Michaels
StageName: 12
Illustration of the movement of the three hemispheres of cells, the animal cap (dark green) the marginal zone (lime green) and the ventral cap (yellow) during frog gastrulation. The external view column (images a.1-a.6) shows gastrulation as it occurs on the outside of the embryo. The cross-section view column (images b.1-b.6) shows the internal view of gastrulation. The cross-sections are through the middle of the embryo.
Created 2013-12-13
Last modified 1 year 4 months ago
Format: GraphicsStudies of Thalidomide's Effects on Rodent Embryos from 1962-2008
By Chanapa Tantibanchachai, Joanna Yang
Thalidomide is a sedative drug introduced to European markets on 1 October 1957 after extensive testing on rodent embryos to ensure its safety. Early laboratory tests in rodent populations showed that pregnant rodents could safely use it, so doctors prescribed Thalidomide to treat morning sickness in pregnant women. However, in humans Thalidomide interfered with embryonic and fetal development in ways not observed in rodent tests.
Created 2014-03-07
Last modified 4 years 3 hours ago
Format: ArticlesMitochondria
By Dorothy R. Haskett
All cells that have a nucleus, including plant, animal, fungal cells, and most single-celled protists, also have mitochondria. Mitochondria are particles called organelles found outside the nucleus in a cell's cytoplasm. The main function of mitochondria is to supply energy to the cell, and therefore to the organism. The theory for how mitochondria evolved, proposed by Lynn Margulis in the twentieth century, is that they were once free-living organisms.
Created 2014-07-05
Last modified 3 years 6 months ago
Format: ArticlesLysogenic Bacteria as an Experimental Model at the Pasteur Institute (1915-1965)
By Valerie Racine
Lysogenic bacteria, or virus-infected bacteria, were the primary experimental models used by scientists working in the laboratories of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, during the 1950s and 1960s. Historians of science have noted that the use of lysogenic bacteria as a model in microbiological research influenced the scientific achievements of the Pasteur Institute's scientists.
Created 2014-10-10
Last modified 3 years 5 months ago
Format: ArticlesIntraspecies Chimeras Produced in Laboratory Settings (1960-1975)
By Sarah Taddeo
When cells-but not DNA-from two or more genetically distinct individuals combine to form a new individual, the result is called a chimera. Though chimeras occasionally occur in nature, scientists have produced chimeras in a laboratory setting since the 1960s. During the creation of a chimera, the DNA molecules do not exchange genetic material (recombine), unlike in sexual reproduction or in hybrid organisms, which result from genetic material exchanged between two different species. A chimera instead contains discrete cell populations with two unique sets of parental genes.
Created 2014-11-25
Last modified 3 years 3 months ago
Format: ArticlesThe Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog
By Christopher Rojas
The Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus) was an aquatic frog that lived in south-east Australia. In 2002, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List declared the frog extinct, although no wild specimens had been reported since 1981. As the common name alludes to, the R.
Created 2015-01-26
Last modified 3 years 1 month ago
Format: ArticlesWolbachia
By Karine Prevot
Bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are
bacteria that live within the cells of their hosts. They infect a
wide range of arthropods (insects, arachnids, and crustaceans) and
some nematodes (parasitic roundworms). Scientists estimate that
Wolbachia exist in between seventeen percent and seventy-six percent of
arthropods and nematodes. The frequency of the bacteria makes them
one of the most widespread parasites. In general, they are divided
into five groups, from A to E, depending of the species of their
Created 2015-01-29
Last modified 2 years 11 months ago
Format: ArticlesOviraptor philoceratops Dinosaurs
By Paige Madison
Oviraptor philoceratops was a small bird-like dinosaur that lived about seventy-five million years ago, during the late Cretaceous period. In 1923, George Olsen of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City, New York, discovered the first Oviraptor fossilized skeleton on top of a dinosaur egg nest in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Because of the close proximity of dinosaur and nest, when Henry Fairfield Osborn president of the AMNH published on the discovery, he assumed that the Oviraptor had died attempting to steal the eggs.
Created 2015-02-11
Last modified 3 years 3 weeks ago
Format: ArticlesStudy of Fossilized Massospondylus Dinosaur Embryos from South Africa (1978-2012)
By Paige Madison
In 1978, James Kitching discovered two dinosaur embryos in a road-cut talus at Roodraai (Red Bend) in Golden Gate Highlands National Park, South Africa. Kitching assigned the fossilized embryos to the species of long necked herbivores Massospondylus carinatus (longer vertebra) from the Early Jurassic period, between 200 and 183 million years ago. The embryos were partially visible but surrounded by eggshell and rock, called matrix. Kitching said that the eggs were too delicate to remove from the matrix without damage.
Created 2015-03-31
Last modified 2 years 11 months ago
Format: ArticlesPaul Kammerer's Experiments on Sea-squirts in the Early Twentieth Century
By Federica Turriziani Colonna
In the early twentieth century, Paul Kammerer, a zoologist working at the Vivarium in Vienna, Austria, experimented on sea-squirts (Ciona intestinalis). Kammerer claimed that results from his experiments demonstrated that organisms could transmit characteristics that they had acquired in their lifetimes to their offspring. Kammerer conducted breeding experiments on sea-squirts and other organisms at a time when Charles Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution lacked evidence to explain how offspring inherited traits from their parents.
Created 2015-04-13
Last modified 2 years 11 months ago
Format: ArticlesFruit Fly Life Cycle
By Amy Pribadi
Object is a digital image of fruit flies, showing how they develop through stages of egg, larva, pupa, and adult. The image has a magnification box on parts of the larvae. The box displays imaginal disc, which eventually develop into the adult body parts.
Fruit flies of the species Drosophila melanogaster develop from eggs to adults in eight to ten days at 25 degrees Celsius. They develop through four primary stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. When in the wild, female flies lay their fertilized eggs in rotting fruit or other decomposing material that can serve as food for the larvae. In the lab, fruit flies lay their fertilized eggs in a mixture of agar, molasses, cornmeal, and yeast. After roughly a day, each egg hatches into a larva.
Created 2016-10-11
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsBeadle and Ephrussi Show that Something Besides Eye Tissue Determines Eye Color in Fruit Flies
By Amy Pribadi
Object is a digital image of fruit flies, and it has three panes. The first pane shows two fruit fly larvae, with one having its optic disc removed and the other getting that disc inserted in its abdomen. The second pane shows an adult fruit fly, a donee, which has a normal colored eye in its abdomen. The third pane shows an adult fruit fly, a donee, which has an abnormally colored eye in its abdomen.
In the 1930s, George Beadle and Boris Ephrussi discovered factors that affect eye colors in developing fruit flies. They did so while working at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. (1) They took optic discs (colored fuchsia in the image) from fruit fly larvae in the third instar stage of development. Had the flies not been manipulated, they would have developed into adults with vermilion eyes.
Created 2016-10-11
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsBeadle and Ephrussi’s Technique to Transplant Optic Discs between Fruit Fly Larvae
By Amy Pribadi
Object is a digital image of fruit fly larvae. There are three panes. In the first, a micropipette sucks the optic disc from a fruit fly larva. In the second, the micropipette pushes the optic disc into the abdomen of another fruit fly larva. The third pane shows the adult fruit fly from the second pane with an eye that has developed in its abdomen.
In 1935, George Beadle and Boris Ephrussi developed a technique to transplant optic discs between fruit fly larvae. They developed it while at the California Institute of Technology in Pasedena, California. Optic discs are tissues from which the adult eyes develop. Beadle and Ephrussi used their technique to study the development of the eye and eye pigment. (1) The experimenter dissects a donor larva, which is in the third instar stage of development, and removes the optic disc (colored red) with a micropipette.
Created 2016-10-11
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsNeurospora crassa
By Amy Pribadi
Object is a digital image. It displays a laboratory workbench. On it is a loaf of bread with bread mold growing on it. There is also a set of beakers showing the bread mold raised in culture media. There is also a microscope, and a magnification box that shows an image microscopic bread mold.
Neurospora crassa is a red mold that scientists use to study genetics. N. crassa commonly grows on bread as shown in the top left corner of this figure. To culture the mold in lab, researchers grow it in glassware such as test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, and petri dishes, as shown in the top right corner of the figure. In the glassware, researchers place a gel, called a medium, of agar, sucrose, salts, and vitamins. The mold grows on the medium, and cotton stoppers prevent anything from contaminating the mold.
Created 2016-10-11
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsNeurospora crassa Life Cycle
By Amy Pribadi
Object is a digital image with two parts that together show the Neurospora life cycle. The left part shows the asexual reproductive cycle of the mold. The right part shows the sexual reproductive cycle of the mold.
This diagram shows the life cycle of Neurospora crassa, a mold that grows on bread. N. crassa can reproduce through an asexual cycle or a sexual cycle. The asexual cycle (colored as a purple circle), begins in this figure with (1a) vegetative mycelium, which are strands of mature fungus. Some of the strands form bulbs (2a) in a process called conidiation. From those bulbs develop the conidia, which are spores. Next, (3a) a single conidium separates from its strand and elongates until it forms mycelium.
Created 2016-10-12
Last modified 8 months 2 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsSouthern Gastric Brooding Frog
By Anna Guerrero
Object is a painted image of two southern gastric brooding frogs facing each other. The one on the left has a transparent middle to reveal tadpoles swimming inside of it. The one on the right shows a more mature juvenile crawling out of the mouth.
The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobotrahcus silus) was a frog species that lived in Australia. It was declared extinct in 2002. Once adult males fertilized the eggs of females, the females swallowed their eggs. The stomachs of the females then functioned somewhat like wombs, protecting the eggs while they gestated. Once the eggs developed into juveniles, female frogs performed oral birth and regurgitated their young.
Created 2017-02-06
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: GraphicsJelly Fish and Green Fluorescent Protein
By Anna Guerrero
Object is a digital image that represents green fluorescent protein at various levels of organization within an organism. On the left of the image is a blue circle, in which there is a jelly fish, with some of its parts aglow. From one such part, a zoom circle juts to the right, in which is represented a strand of DNA from the jelly fish. From that circle, a black arrow points to the right and to a new zoom circle, this one representing the primary amino acid sequence coded for by the DNA sequence and that eventually folds into the protein.
The crystal jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, produces and emits light, called bioluminescence. Its DNA codes for sequence of 238 amino acids that forms a protein called Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP). FP is folded so that a part of the protein, called the chromophore, is located in the center of the protein. The chemical structure of the chromophore emits a green fluorescence when exposed to light in the range of blue to ultraviolet.
Created 2017-02-06
Last modified 8 months 3 weeks ago
Format: Graphics