To continue our efforts in tackling difficult aspects of the academic work environment, we organized another seminar at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Bioengineering (TU Dresden) to discuss the issue of “Power Abuse in Academia” with Professor Daniel Leising from the TU Dresden Faculty of Psychology. Leising specializes in research into the psychology of judgements. Through his work as member of the Network against Abuse of Power in Science (https://www.netzwerk-mawi.de/en/), chairing the DGPs-Commission on Incentive structure, power abuse and scientific misconduct (since 2022) and detailed analyses of cases from outside academia, he strives to bring the topic of “Power Abuse” into the light and under scrutiny.
Power abuse by few can lead to effects felt by many
Prof. Leising began the seminar with a preface noting that this topic is not only of crucial importance but also highly sensitive. In order to facilitate a constructive discussion, it is important to stress that many in the position of power in academia are respectful, decent people with every intention to put public money to good use for the best of society. The issues discussed in the seminar relate to the few who take advantage of the system mostly for their own personal gain, why the current system is so susceptible to these types of abuses, and ultimately, how far-reaching the repercussions of the abuse by those few often are.
In order to abuse power, one must have power – defined as the “ability to exercise one’s will over others even if they resist or oppose” (Max Weber). Power differentials have a clear function in a work environment with the purpose of streamlining the achievement of shared goals. In science, these goals are:
Providing high-quality research for the benefit of society
Providing high-quality teaching of students
Providing high-quality training and mentoring for Early Career Researchers (ECRs)
Responsible and efficient use of public resources in working towards these goals
Abuse of Power takes place when power is illegitimately exercised to achieve personal goals (or goals of a group that a person belongs to) at the expense of others, and the severity of that abuse hinges on how long-lasting the likely effects are and the extent of the difference between the net benefits of the person in power and those of other affected parties. Prof. Leising displayed this via a series of informative graphs showing different types of scenarios (Fig. 1) and the respective net benefits for each form of power abuse, which can include: misappropriation of resources, exploitation, bullying, sexual harassment, and different forms of scientific misconduct.
Figure 1: Net benefits in different scenarios of power abuse. Green dot: positive, red dot: negative. Reproduced with permission of Prof. Leising.
Susceptibility of academia to power abuse
In the next part of the seminar Prof. Leising discussed the main causes for occurrences of Power Abuse specifically in the German Academic System. He began by introducing the Toxic Triangle model (Padilla et al, 2007) which highlights the roles of Destructive Leaders, Susceptible Followers and Conducive Environments in bringing about unethical conduct in organizations. He then addressed each arm of the triangle separately to yield a composite view of what specifically about (German) academia contributes to the issue.
Our current academic system selects its leaders on the base of two major qualifications: the ability to produce impactful science as rated by the number of publications in reputable journals, and the ability to present yourself as capable of conducting said impactful research via the acquisition of funding (grants, scholarships etc). Dishonesty in research, which can contribute to those qualifications, is unfortunately likely to be rewarded because the metrics are easily manipulated (e.g., authorships), quality control is tightly linked to the occasionally faulty peer review process, and sanctions are rare and inadequate. Additionally, the selection process only secondarily focuses on interpersonal skills, teaching qualifications, and experience or predispositions to leading or supervising other people. Therefore, this selection pressure may work in favor of people with personality dispositions like narcissism, low honesty-humility and even psychopathy. Once a person with those traits is in a position of power they can have a negative impact on their colleagues, their departments and organizations, which disproportionally outweighs their relatively small numbers.
Within the second arm of the toxic triangle (Susceptible Followers) are the Conformers and Colluders of the power abuse. Conformers can be people who are aware of the toxic behaviors but feel unable to stand up to a bully due to their low maturity or perceived hopelessness. Colluders, on the other hand, may just have a similar world-view as a problematic leader, high personal ambitions or bad values and thus actively promote the agenda of a power abuser.
Finally, there is the Conducive Environment where there is a high degree of positional power combined with low levels of institutional oversight, restraint and consequences. This is the case in academia, where Professors and Group Leaders hold a large amount of power in a variety of areas (Table 1) and, as mentioned before, dishonesty and antisocial behaviour can be beneficial to those individuals in light of insufficient control and sanctioning.
Recommendations for systemic and local structural changes
Towards the end of the seminar Prof. Leising focused on the recommended structural changes that could help to prevent instances of Power Abuse in Academia. Many of those were far-reaching and difficult-to-attain systemic changes for example in the publishing sphere (e.g., not for profit-publishing, open and citeable peer review, limiting the number of authorships per researcher), or within large organizations (external oversight, establishing effective complaints procedures). Others were simpler, locally-implementable measures (Table 1). Of key importance here would be the more equal redistribution of power such that dependencies and loyalties among individuals in professional relationships can be avoided.
Although it may sometimes be difficult to discuss the topic of power abuse in a well-balanced and objective manner, it is crucial to continue talking about potential ways for improvement, even if by small increments. The most practical recommendations suggested in the seminar were something that all members of scientific institutions could discuss together and potentially implement to make even small strides towards bettering our scientific community.
Table 1: List of selected powers of Group Leaders and Professors and potential measures to distribute them more evenly, to reduce the potential for abuse
References:
Padilla, A., Hogan, R., Kaiser, R.B. (2007) The toxic triangle: Destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive environments. The Leadership Quarterly. 18 (3): 176-194
We are delighted to be partnering with the British Society for Developmental Biology and the International Society for Regenerative Biology to deliver a one-day international meeting tackling the biggest questions in tissue development and regeneration through interdisciplinary collaborations.
Development is a breathtaking process whereby a single cell gives rise to all of the body’s specialised tissues. How would you reverse engineer parts of this process to re-create tissue if it’s lost or damaged? This meeting will bring together leading developmental and regenerative biologists to discuss the latest research and identify future scientific directions for innovation and collaboration.
Please find a poster for the event with more details attached – we have an excellent programme of exciting international speakers, including a keynote address by Professor Ashley Seifert from the University of Kentucky. The day will feature plenty of coffee breaks, a conference lunch, and a networking drinks reception.
There will also be an opportunity for early career researchers to present posters and short oral presentations.
The deadline for poster abstract submission is 11 March 2024 5pm.
Early bird registration closes on 1 April 2024 – don’t miss out!
In the first webinar of 2024, Development’s Deputy Editor, Steve Wilson (UCL), hosted three early career researchers studying signalling and early embryogenesis.
We are delighted to announce three new Node correspondents — please join us to welcome Alex Neaverson, James Zwierzynski and Shreyasi Mukherjee. We look forward to working with them over the coming year to produce a wide range of content on the Node!
Alex Neaverson is a third-year PhD student at the University of Cambridge, studying regeneration of the Hensen’s Node in chick embryos. Alex is a keen artist and has recently got into scientific illustration while doing an internship at a research charity. As a Node correspondent, she plans to use her artistic skills to create illustrated career timelines of developmental biologists and draw graphical summaries to highlight research conducted by different teams around the world. Read our interview with Alex.
James Zwierzynski is currently a first-year PhD student at Stanford University, investigating vascular morphogenesis and growth in the placenta. With a background in humanities, James aims to combine his interests in philosophy and science to write about topics in reproductive biology and philosophy of science. Read our interview with James.
Shreyasi Mukherjee is a postdoc at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, using stem cell-derived embryo models to study how epigenetic complexes regulate tissue organization and cell fate decisions during very early embryonic development. Shreyasi is keen to write about the fast-evolving field of stem cell-based embryo models. Having experienced working in India, the UK and the US, she also plans to highlight the scientists and research from the Global South countries. Read our interview with Shreyasi.
Our sister community site, FocalPlane, has also announced their new correspondents. Head over to their website to find out more about the new FocalPlane correspondents.
What is the set of instructions that directs cells as they form a tissue, and how did this set of instructions evolve throughout species evolution? In a new study, we generated organoids from a variety of species that can be utilized to answer these questions and more.
Rabbit mammary gland organoid
Organoids are miniature versions of an organ, grown in a 3D tissue culture. To understand the process of development and regeneration, our lab uses organoids. Our lab uses organoids that are generated from single cells and develop into architecturally and cellularly complex tissues. This model offers a valuable window into the developmental process.
Our model organ is the mammary gland, one of the most uniquely regenerative tissues and a hallmark of all mammals. This remarkable organ develops and regenerates mostly postnatally. During the embryonic period, a rudimentary network of epithelial ducts is established and remains dormant until puberty, when it expands and forms a ductal-lobular network. After the pubertal expansion, the mammary gland is capable of further maturation and expansion upon pregnancy and lactation, when it will mature to its full capacity as a milk-producing organ.
Unlike other organs that consistently regenerate, like the skin and intestinal epithelia, the mammary gland undergoes cycles of regeneration and degeneration but those are not pre-determined or necessarily continuous, they depend on specific hormonal cues and can be many years apart. As such, the mammary gland exists in a state of readiness to fulfill its full developmental capacity.
Remarkably, despite years of research, we are still unclear about the identity of the cells that regenerate the mammary gland, and how exactly they do it. Organoids offer the opportunity to observe mammary tissue formation from single cells in an experimental setting under controlled conditions.
Mammary organoid technology was originally developed for human breast tissue, where it aims to be an alternative to in-vivo experiments that we can’t do in humans. But if organoids can be an alternative to human tissue, perhaps they can also be an alternative to the many other mammals we cannot study.
Questions like: how did the mammary gland emerge during evolution? What regeneration mechanism did the mammary gland develop throughout? What is the precursor gland that the mammary gland evolved from? If the mammary gland evolved from a coiled apocrine gland, as is currently thought, when and how did the branching of the gland appear during evolution? How did gradual genetic changes lead to the wide variety of phenotypes manifested across mammals today? These questions and more can be studied by exploring the mammary glands of mammalian groups that diverged early in mammalian evolution, such as monotremes and marsupials.
Monotremes, which diverged from eutherians about 190 million years ago, are mammals that lay eggs and then lactate the hatched offspring. Their mammary gland is primitive and is akin to a sweat gland associated with a hair follicle. Monotremes consist of only two species: the platypus and the echidna, both with restricted global spread and much fewer individuals compared to other mammalian groups. Marsupials, which diverged from eutherians about 166 million years ago, have more evolved mammary glands, but some still retain the hair association before pubertal development (it disappears in the adult gland).
The limited access to these species can be overcome by using organoid models. The ability to manipulate these organoids genetically also opens the potential to explore how genetic changes may affect the phenotype within and between species, effectively simulating mammalian evolution.
Other questions that can be answered by exploring mammary gland development, using organoids, relate to the regulation of milk production and milk composition. For example, the simultaneous secretion of different milk compositions in the Tammar wallaby indicates that milk composition can be regulated at the local tissue level, but it is unclear how [1-4]. Some species exhibit delayed involution, which is the degeneration of the gland when lactation stops, and the mechanisms behind this delay are not entirely understood [5-7]. It may assist in exploring questions related to breast cancer, as some mammals seem to be resistant to this type of cancer while others are highly susceptible [8].
To lay the foundations for exploring these questions, we sought to grow mammary gland organoids from single primary cells derived from 9 different species: 8 eutherian species (aka placental mammals), and one marsupial – the gray short-tailed opossum.
It took some trial and error (aka the “heuristic approach”) to reach culture conditions that support the growth of mammary organoids from all these species. In the process, we found that some but not all species organoids required inhibition of the ROCK protein to form branches in 3D culture. The mechanisms behind the involvement of ROCK proteins in branching are still unclear, but a model system of organoids from species that require the inhibitor and those that do not may help shed light on how ROCK proteins participate in branching morphogenesis.
In conclusion, our exploration of mammary gland development across various species using organoids offers a pioneering view into the evolution, development, and function of this unique organ. Mammary organoids stand as a versatile and powerful tool and will hopefully guide novel approaches to studying tissue regeneration, milk production regulation, and cancer resistance.
References
1. Green, B., K. Newgrain, and J. Merchant, Changes in milk composition during lactation in the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Australian Journal of Biological Sciences, 1980. 33(1): p. 35-42.
2. Nicholas, K.R., Asynchronous dual lactation in a marsupial, the tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 1988. 154(2): p. 529-536.
3. Sharp, J.A., et al., The tammar wallaby: A marsupial model to examine the timed delivery and role of bioactives in milk. Gen Comp Endocrinol, 2017. 244: p. 164-177.
4. Wanyonyi, S.S., et al., The extracellular matrix locally regulates asynchronous concurrent lactation in tammar wallaby (Macropus eugenii). Matrix Biology, 2013. 32(6): p. 342-351.
5. Sharp, J.A., et al., Fur seal adaptations to lactation: insights into mammary gland function. Current topics in developmental biology, 2006. 72: p. 275-308.
6. Sharp, J.A., et al., The fur seal-a model lactation phenotype to explore molecular factors involved in the initiation of apoptosis at involution. J Mammary Gland Biol Neoplasia, 2007. 12(1): p. 47-58.
7. Sharp, J.A., C. Lefevre, and K.R. Nicholas, Lack of functional alpha-lactalbumin prevents involution in Cape fur seals and identifies the protein as an apoptotic milk factor in mammary gland involution. BMC Biol, 2008. 6: p. 48.
8. Munson, L. and A. Moresco, Comparative pathology of mammary gland cancers in domestic and wild animals. Breast Dis, 2007. 28: p. 7-21.
Dongying Chen, Oleksii S Rukhlenko, Brian G Coon, Divyesh Joshi, Raja Chakraborty, Kathleen A Martin, Boris N Kholodenko, Martin A Schwartz, Michael Simons
Shruti Kumar, Eric Bareke, Jimmy Lee, Emma Carlson, Fjodor Merkuri, Evelyn E. Schwager, Steven Maglio, Jennifer L. Fish, Jacek Majewski, Loydie A Jerome-Majewska
Miquel Sendra, Katie McDole, Daniel Jimenez-Carretero, Juan de Dios Hourcade, Susana Temiño, Morena Raiola, Léo Guignard, Philipp J Keller, Fátima Sánchez-Cabo, Jorge N. Domínguez, Miguel Torres
Mitchell Bestry, Alexander N. Larcombe, Nina Kresoje, Emily K Chivers, Chloe Bakker, James P Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth J Elliott, Jeffrey M Craig, Evelyne Muggli, Jane Halliday, Delyse Hutchinson, Sam Buckberry, Ryan Lister, Martyn Symons, David Martino
Samhan Alsolami, Arun Pandian Chandrasekaran, Yiqing Jin, Ismail M. Shakir, Yingzi Zhang, Gerardo Ramos-Mandujano, Baolei Yuan, Alfonso Saera-Vila, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Mo Li
Steven M. Garcia, Justin Lau, Agustin Diaz, Hannah Chi, Miguel Lizarraga, Aboubacar Wague, Cristhian Montenegro, Michael R. Davies, Xuhui Liu, Brian T. Feeley
Franziska Peters, Susanne Brodesser, Kai Kruse, Hannes C.A. Drexler, Jiali Hu, Dominika Lukas, Esther von Stebut, Martin Krönke, Carien M. Niessen, Sara A. Wickström
Laura Massoz, David Bergemann, Arnaud Lavergne, Celia Reynders, Caroline Desiront, Chiara Goossens, Lydie Flasse, Bernard Peers, Marianne Voz, Isabelle Manfroid
Paolo Petazzi, Telma Ventura, Francesca Paola Luongo, Heather McClafferty, Alisha May, Helen Alice Taylor, Mike Shipston, Nicola Romano, Lesley Forrester, Pablo Menendez, Antonella Fidanza
Bérénice Schell, Lin-Pierre Zhao, Camille Kergaravat, Emilie Lereclus, Maria Kalogeraki, Pierre Fenaux, Lionel Ades, Antoine Toubert, Marion Espeli, Karl Balabanian, Emmanuel Clave, Nicolas Dulphy, Valeria Bisio
Raquel Montalban-Loro, Anna Lozano-Urena, Laura Lazaro-Carot, Esteban Jimenez-Villalba, Jordi Planells, Adela Lleches-Padilla, Mitsu Ito, Elisabeth Radford, Sacri M Ferron
Kathryn M. Polkoff, Nithin K. Gupta, Yanet Murphy, Ross Lampe, Jaewook Chung, Amber Carter, Jeremy M. Simon, Katherine Gleason, Adele Moatti, Preetish K. Murthy, Laura Edwards, Alon Greenbaum, Aleksandra Tata, Purushothama Rao Tata, Jorge A. Piedrahita
Noémie Dehaene, Clément Boussardon, Philippe Andrey, Delphine Charif, Dennis Brandt, Clémence Gilouppe Taillefer, Thomas Nietzel, Anthony Ricou, Matthieu Simon, Joseph Tran, Daniel Vezon, Christine Camilleri, Shin-ichi Arimura, Markus Schwarzländer, Françoise Budar
Sourabh Palande, Jeremy Arsenault, Patricia Basurto-Lozada, Andrew Bleich, Brianna N. I. Brown, Sophia F. Buysse, Noelle A. Connors, Sikta Das Adhikari, Kara C. Dobson, Francisco Xavier Guerra-Castillo, Maria F. Guerrero-Carrillo, Sophia Harlow, Héctor Herrera-Orozco, Asia T. Hightower, Paulo Izquierdo, MacKenzie Jacobs, Nicholas A. Johnson, Wendy Leuenberger, Alessandro Lopez-Hernandez, Alicia Luckie-Duque, Camila Martínez-Avila, Eddy J. Mendoza-Galindo, David Plancarte, Jenny M. Schuster, Harry Shomer, Sidney C. Sitar, Anne K. Steensma, Joanne Elise Thomson, Damián Villaseñor-Amador, Robin Waterman, Brandon M. Webster, Madison Whyte, Sofía Zorilla-Azcué, Beronda L. Montgomery, Aman Y. Husbands, Arjun Krishnan, Sarah Percival, Elizabeth Munch, Robert VanBuren, Daniel H. Chitwood, Alejandra Rougon-Cardoso
Luis Baudouin Gonzalez, Anna Schoenauer, Amber Harper, Saad Arif, Daniel J Leite, Philip O. M. Steinhoff, Matthias Pechmann, Valeriia Telizhenko, Atal Pande, Carolin Kosiol, Alistair P McGregor, Lauren Sumner-Rooney
Chunyang Ni, Leqian Yu, Barbara Vona, Dayea Park, Yulei Wei, Daniel A Schmitz, Yudong Wei, Yi Ding, Masahiro Sakurai, Emily Ballard, Yan Liu, Ashwani Kumar, Chao Xing, Hyung-Goo Kim, Cumhur Ekmekci, Ehsan Ghayoor Karimiani, Shima Imannezhad, Fatemeh Eghbal, Reza Shervin Badv, Eva Maria Christina Schwaibold, Mohammadreza Dehghani, Mohammad Yahya Vahidi Mehrjardi, Zahra Metanat, Hosein Eslamiyeh, Ebtissal Khouj, Saleh Mohammed Nasser Alhajj, Aziza Chedrawi, César Augusto Pinheiro Ferreira Alves, Henry Houlden, Michael Kruer, Fowzan S. Alkuraya, Can Cenik, Reza Maroofian, Jun Wu, Michael Buszczak
Monir Modaresinejad, Xiaojuan Yang, Mohammad Ali Mohammad Nezhady, Tang Zhu, Emmanuel Bajon, Xin Hou, Houda Tahiri, Pierre Hardy, Jose Carlos Rivera, Pierre Lachapelle, Sylvain Chemtob
Joan Chang, Adam Pickard, Jeremy A. Herrera, Sarah O’Keefe, Matthew Hartshorn, Richa Garva, Anna Hoyle, Lewis Dingle, Cédric Zeltz, Jason Wong, Adam Reid, Rajamiyer V. Venkateswaran, Yinhui Lu, Patrick Caswell, Stephen High, Donald Gullberg, Karl E. Kadler
Alexandra V. Bruter, Ekaterina A. Varlamova, Nina I. Stavskaya, Zoia G. Antysheva, Vasily N. Manskikh, Anna V. Tvorogova, D. S. Korshunova, Alvina I. Khamidullina, Marina V. Utkina, Viktor P. Bogdanov, Alyona I. Nikiforova, Eugene A. Albert, Denis O. Maksimov, Jing Li, Mengqian Chen, Alexander A. Shtil, Igor B. Roninson, Vladislav A. Mogila, Yulia Y. Silaeva, Victor V. Tatarskiy
Julien Delpierre, Jose Ignacio Valenzuela, Matthew Bovyn, Nuno Pimpao Martins, Lenka Belicova, Urska Repnik, Maarten Bebelman, Sarah Seifert, Pierre A Haas, Yannis L Kalaidzidis, Marino Zerial
Yashi Gu, Jiayao Chen, Ziqi Wang, Zhekai Li, Xia Xiao, Qizhe Shao, Yitian Xiao, Wenyang Liu, Sisi Xie, Yaxuan Ye, Jin Jiang, Xiaoying Xiao, Ya Yu, Min Jin, Robert Young, Lei Hou, Di Chen
Sanem Sariyar, Alexandros Sountoulidis, Jan Niklas Hansen, Sergio Marco Salas, Mariya Mardamshina, Anna Martinez Sacals, Frederic Ballllosera Navarro, Zaneta Andrusivova, Xiaofei Li, Paulo Czarnewski, Joakim Lundeberg, Sten Linnarsson, Mats Nilsson, Erik Sundstrom, Christos Samakovlis, Emma Lundberg, Burcu Ayoglu
Alice Accorsi, Brenda Pardo, Eric Ross, Timothy J. Corbin, Melainia McClain, Kyle Weaver, Kym Delventhal, Jason A. Morrison, Mary Cathleen McKinney, Sean A. McKinney, Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado
The 1st International Symposium on Women in Tunicate Biology, organized by Anna Di Gregorio and Marie Nydam, was held online on March 28-29, 2023. This global symposium was attended by 50 researchers from several countries, including Austria, Brazil, India, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Turkey, and the United States. The 35 manuscripts in this collection include “tribute” papers that honor women scientists who pioneered and advanced the field of tunicate biology, as well as “In Her Words” letters, which provided a canvas for women scientists to freely describe their research and themselves. The proceedings are published in a Special Issue in genesis: The Journal of Genetics and Development. All of the articles in this Special Issue will be freely accessible on the genesis website for a period of 3 months.
This special Issue is expected to become a resource for all scientists interested in tunicate biology, a reference for early and contemporary work in this field of science, and an inspiration for all women scientists. All of the major fields of tunicate biology are represented, including developmental and stem cell biology, regeneration biology, ecology and taxonomy.
This is an excerpt of the Editorial written by James Briscoe and Katherine Brown, published in Volume 151, Issue 1 of Development.
The start of a new year is often a time to reflect and take stock. As researchers (and editors) we are usually so involved in the day-to-day challenges of our jobs that we lose sight of the bigger picture. But stepping back, it is extraordinary to see how much has changed over the last few years in scientific publishing and in the journals we are all familiar with. New business models, innovations in peer review and the rise of preprints are all having a huge impact, and the rise of Artificial Intelligence seems likely to revolutionise the research and publishing ecosystems (for good and bad) in ways we are only beginning to imagine. Of course, the primary role of journals continues to be to publish research findings and disseminate their conclusions, and broader developments in the field, to the wider scientific community. But the impact of journals like Development (and its sister journals at The Company of Biologists) extends further. By organising conferences and workshops, we help connect researchers and enable new collaborations. By awarding travelling fellowships and promoting the next generation of researchers, we support the next wave of innovation. By hosting and managing forums such as the Node, preLights and Focal Plane, we facilitate dialogue and the exchange of ideas and resources. These community-building efforts are possible only because we are a not-for-profit journal run by scientists for scientists. But, like all journals, we rely on our authors and the papers you send us. Without authors there would be no journal at all, and we couldn’t support the field in the ways that we do. Sometimes with all the demands and pressures on us, we lose sight of this broader perspective, and our choice of journal is driven by factors such as what we think would impress others, or where we think we might get an ‘easy ride’. However, where you choose to send your paper is not a neutral decision: publishing is political. By choosing to send your next paper to Development you are demonstrating your support for a not-for-profit scientist-led journal, and you are signifying your commitment to the field and to the next generation of researchers. It is only with your backing that we can continue supporting discovery in developmental and stem cell biology for years to come. So as you plan your 2024 submissions, we ask you to choose Development.
Last year saw the start of Development’s Pathway to Independence (PI) programme (Briscoe and Brown, 2022). We all recognise that finding a job in academia and setting up a lab are major challenges for which many postdocs feel underprepared. We established the PI programme with this in mind. It provides mentorship, training and networking opportunities to a group of postdocs about to apply for academic positions. It was a pleasure to meet the first cohort of fellows in October and hear their stories. You can read more about them on our website, and also find out more about the aims of the programme and the application and selection process. It was also satisfying to hear how the programme had helped them. One commented, ‘The programme has been a game changer for me as I search for an independent position, giving me unprecedented visibility in the community as well as amazing training that will help me in my transition to being a PI.’ We have now opened our second call for applications to this programme. We are keen to see applications from all corners of the world and from all areas of developmental and stem cell biology. If you know anyone that might benefit from the programme, please let them know about it.
When the two of us, Brent and Alex, started our Node correspondent positions early last year, we both expressed an interest in non-model organisms (NMOs). While one of us (Brent) works with several NMOs, the other (Alex) is solidly in the mouse camp, arguably the ur-model organism of our days. Since we both declared a shared interest in NMOs, it was a matter of competing or collaborating (har har)! Combining our forces, we identified and individually interviewed five researchers who work with NMOs in their labs. But even in this group, some NMOs are more conventional than others.
Here, we have condensed each individual interview into one “super-interview” that compares and contrasts the questions, the approaches, and the problems these labs encounter in their research. The result is a regular pot pourri of NMO research. As they all understandably had many interesting things to say about their respective research areas, we’ll be uploading individual interviews as articles for The Node throughout the next couple of months.
It’s critical to establish systems facilitating investigations in novel organisms given the urgency to document and understand the rich biodiversity of our natural world and preserve it as best we can. But on top of that, we found these scientists are motivated by a universal human urge to explore something unusual, confusing, or sometimes just plain cool. They demonstrate the true spirit of research.
Although by no means a comprehensive or even representative list of NMOs, we hope this article will encourage people to become familiar with more obscure research models and questions, and perhaps provide the impetus for the field to explore beyond its established comfort zone.
With that, let’s introduce our researchers and their respective NMO(s) of choice:
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Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo: works with single-celled eukaryotes (Institut de Biologia Evolutiva, Barcelona, Spain)
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Cliff Ragsdale: works with octopus (University of Chicago, USA)
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András Simon: works with newts (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden)
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Michalis Averof: works with shrimps (Institut de Génomique Fonctionelle de Lyon, France)
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Patricia Ornelas-García: works with Mexican cavefish (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico)
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Could you give us a short summary of your research?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
What fascinates me is the evolutionary transitions. I did my PhD in one of the major evolutionary transitions—the original bilaterian, that transition from radial symmetry to bilaterally symmetrical animals. I was looking to do a postdoc on the origin of eukaryotes. My supervisor proposed to me, saying, ‘I have a very weird organism that seems to be closely related to animals. Would you be interested in the origin of animals?’ I said yes, I’d be interested, and then I started to work.
Cliff Ragsdale (octopus)
I did a post-doc on amphibian limb regeneration. In my own lab I moved into neuroembryology—essentially chick molecular experimental biology focusing primarily on midbrain development. And then about 2 decades ago, I switched to evolutionary neuroscience and was interested in two problems: one, the evolution of the neocortex and the other is on cephalopods, specifically octopus. I was interested in how a large brain could be organized apart from the vertebrate design.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
In the lab we study regeneration using this small crustacean [Parhyale hawaiensis] as our model. Ever since my PhD, I was interested in comparative developmental biology, in what different organisms can tell us about mechanisms of development and how those mechanisms evolve. This is how we started to work with crustaceans. Then gradually regeneration, which was a side project, became our main focus.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
I work mainly with the systematics and speciation mechanisms in freshwater fish species. Since my PhD, I have worked with Astyanax.In the beginning, I just wanted to [study] as many [Astyanax populations from various] caves as we could, so we could test these hypotheses of how many times the fish has been able to adapt to the caves. Nowadays, we are starting to move to some developmental analyses. So far, we have been able to reproduce five [Astyanax] populations, different from the common ones like Pachón or Tinaja. We are trying to compare the differences during early development. We are also exploring the phenotypic convergence with other cavefish in Mexico, particularly in some processes related with asymmetry.
András Simon (newt)
I started my lab 2002, and since then we have been working on newt regeneration. The reason we are interested in newts is because of their regenerative capacity. They can regenerate large body structures such as entire limbs, large parts of the brain, spinal cord, cardiac muscle. We think that [by studying newts] one can understand mechanisms that allow or disallow regeneration of complex body parts in vertebrates, but also use regeneration as sort of a way to address fundamental cell and molecular or biological questions that these animals are specialists in. In that context, dedifferentiation of cells is one of the main interests in my group.
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What are some of the particular challenges of using this NMO/NMOs in general?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
There was a lot of missing information. Imagine you want to understand the origin of World War II. You need to have information of how it was before World War II, you know? It’s more or less the same—you need a comparison framework. And there was no information.
Cliff Ragsdale (octopus)
There are still many, many technical challenges. Octopus bimaculoides–the southern California two spot octopus–is kind of like a lab rat in that it has too long of a generation time to be appropriate for any kind of forward genetic studies. We really don’t have a cephalopod yet that’s appropriate for that. And you might say, “Oh, well, why can’t you just use CRISPR?” But the key thing is being able to inject embryos and to have the embryos survive. Transgenesis just hasn’t fallen yet.
There are no invertebrate marine cell cultures. Let that settle in for a moment. You can do primary cultures, and like a science fiction film, these cells in culture or explants in culture will seem to live forever. But it’s very hard. To get proper cell culture of any marine invertebrate would open up a lot of cell biology if the techniques were general ones. There’s hardly anyone working on that, but that’s certainly a need.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
[The Parhyale research community is] more isolated in terms of technology, in the sense that for every project we have to develop our own tools, there isn’t this big community behind you generating Gal4 drivers or Cre lines that are shared, like you have in other systems. When you start a project, you have to generate those tools by yourself. And that is a major limitation when working with our kind of peripheral models.
The other issue is, we haven’t yet figured out an easy way of sending these animals across the world without having problems with customs.
The benefit, on the other side, is that in almost anything you study you’re going to make new discoveries, because no one has studied that before. So you’re entering a virgin field. You have the opportunity to shape your research field to a larger extent.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
Yeah, I think one of the challenges is that there are a very restricted number of people working with these [species]. And in a way, it’s fascinating, because you will find something new for sure. But [from another point of view], in research groups [studying established organisms] it is easier.
We were trying to characterise the microbiome of the fish. And it was a little challenging, because there was not a lot of information already published on protocols or how to treat the data. Or when we are trying to set up [experiments], for example, for physiology or for another kind of ecological analysis, it’s sometimes difficult.
András Simon (newt)
[Newts are] technically challenging for several reasons. One is the relatively long generation time, which can range from nine months to five years. When the molecular biology and the genetic era entered, these organisms became a bit obsolete. Most researchers said, “Well, if I can do all these things in mice, I won’t do that in salamanders, because it’s just too time consuming.” And funding agencies are not always very patient. They also have quite large genomes. Genome sequencing technologies were not there some years ago to make it possible to get a reasonable assembly of the genome.
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What are some of the unique opportunities from using NMOs? Or what recent technical developments are aiding research progress?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
Most of the people who were working on the origin of animals were working with early branching animals, like cnidarians, ctenophores, and sponges. This is very important for early animal evolution, but you can never understand the transition because you are not considering the stuff before.
Cliff Ragsdale (octopus)
You know, it’s great to have a genome.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
[Parhyale] is a very good system if you want to image what happens during regeneration. You can image the whole process at cellular resolution from beginning to end, [and] the reason is that these animals as adults are transparent. They’re small enough that we can just image through their legs with a confocal microscope. We can make transgenics so we can label the cells; and we can immobilise them, which can be a big challenge in other organisms [that regenerate as adults]. In our system, what allows us to image regeneration is the fact that arthropods are encased in the chitinous exoskeleton. We can use simple surgical glue to stick those animals onto a cover slip. And they will stay there, they can’t go away until they molt.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
During my Bachelor’s, I was working with mice, the typical model in the lab, and somehow I think that the number of questions sometimes can be very restricted because there’s already so many studies in these animals, that it’s difficult to come up with something new.
And [working with Astyanax] I have a lot of things in my favour, I am from Mexico, I can work in the field, I can do a lot of in situ experiments. Even nowadays, there are very few Mexicans working with Astyanax. It just happened that there were a lot of things that made me realise that there was a lot of potential in the [Astyanax] system for me.
András Simon (newt)
For us, there were three things that enabled us to interrogate the problem at the molecular level. First, we introduced to the lab a new species, Pleurodeles waltl, which is relatively easy to breed. Secondly, sequencing technologies improved to the degree that now we can compile a good genome assembly. The third is genome editing technology. CRISPR revolutionised many fields, and ours as well. During the past 7-8 years we have been generating genetically modified animals for cell tracking experiments, for loss-of-function experiments, of different genes. Now we are really in the position to address the question of regeneration with molecular tools, and get some mechanistic understanding at the molecular level.
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What is a particular study or finding in your NMO of choice that you think is really cool?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
The most important thing we have discovered is that the unicellular ancestor of animals was genetically much more complex than previously thought.
Cliff Ragsdale (octopus)
It’s in the genomes where I think the greatest surprises have appeared. Having large genomes kind of raises the possibility that, like the vertebrate lineage, you have whole genome duplications. That’s something we see in other animals as well. And that doesn’t show up at all in cephalopods. Lots of key gene families are duplicated. We’re very tempted to think, that even though bony fish, some clades have way, way too many genome duplications, we’d like to think that somehow the two rounds of genome duplication leading to jawed vertebrates is important for the innovations we see in structures of vertebrates, including us—there’s no indication of that in cephalopods. That raises the interesting possibility that gene regulatory mechanisms, cis regulatory mechanisms in particular, by disruption of this synteny by this blender effect might underlie many of the innovations seen in soft-bodied cephalopods.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
One of the latest papers to come out is [by] people who study biological rhythms, and have studied how Parhyale regulate their daily activities in relation to tides. Our animal is an intertidal species, and it seems it has an endogenous clock that runs with the tidal cycle rather than with a day-night cycle. Well, they have both, but somehow the two interact in a complex way. People who study circadian rhythm had noticed that there were two peaks of activity, one in the morning and one in the evening. And the intertidal cycle is a little bit longer than 12 hours. So that might reflect the fact that they have a 12-hour cycle rather than a 24-hour cycle. But of course, in nature, the tidal cycle comes slowly out of sync with the day-night cycle. And that is not observed in the lab. [So] people are beginning to study phenomena that were not accessible before in the standard models, like tides and regeneration. There are new aspects of biology that become accessible once you have a new system.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
In our most recent paper, by a Master’s student of mine, we assess [this] question [of how many times Astyanax has been able to adapt to caves independently]. In our results, we have at least three independent colonisation events of the caves, which for some is crazy, it’s not possible. But from our point of view, we are really relying on exhaustive sampling of the caves, and that is what we’re suggesting.
András Simon (newt)
There’s an interesting dichotomy: one would expect that the price newts pay for getting cells proliferating and dedifferentiating is that they are more prone to get cancer, but that’s actually not true. In fact, during regeneration some genes, which are heavily mutated in mammalian cancers, are actually downregulated during regeneration. And instead of everything just growing randomly, they create a structure.
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How does data analysis and sharing between labs employing NMOs differ compared to studies using established MOs?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
We have quite a lot of collaborations. Our lab is quite diverse. We collaborate a lot. So far most of the community is quite open. It’s usually not a problem.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
We all use the same population of Parhyale. It’s a population that has been kept in the lab for more than 20 years. There are a few people beginning to isolate new populations from the wild. The funny thing about the population we share is that it was picked up in an aquarium in Chicago, about 25 years ago, and we don’t know which part of the world it came from originally. We all use it, the genome has been sequenced from and all our transcriptomic work is based on that population. For transgenesis and CRISPR, we more or less use the same protocols. We don’t share transgenic lines so often, but that’s mostly because we have different interests, and each of us develops our own lines for the particular questions we’re asking.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
In my opinion, one of the things that the Astyanax model has is that [researchers working on it] are very open. For example, when we were trying to reproduce a fish, we were [asking for] a lot of information [from other groups].
András Simon (newt)
Personally, I’m very open with our data. If someone asks me about even unpublished data, I’m happy to share. In my group, we sometimes host guest researchers from the field who are welcome to participate in our lab meetings, where we discuss raw data. Of course, sometimes people are more cautious. But I would say in general, this is a super friendly field.
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How large/connected is the community studying your particular NMO of interest?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
There’s quite a lot of research and quite a lot of labs in the region of multicellularity. My feeling is that every year there is more and more people interested. So now, we are kind of explosive. I see more and more labs connecting with us and being interested in our organisms or in our questions.
It’s one of the biggest transitions compared to all the other major evolutionary transitions. The origin of life, the origin of the eukaryotic cell, the origin of humans, the origin of bilaterian animals–there’s only one single origin of all of that. Animals acquired multicellularity from some kind of ancestor, which we are trying to get who they are, or how they were. Plants acquired multicellularity from a different ancestor from different parts of the tree of life. And algae acquired multicellularity from different ancestors with different genomes, different raw materials. And so on and so on. And the people working on those multicellular organisms—we don’t talk to each other. We go to different conferences, different journals. I think we have to talk to each other at some point. It was impossible to do that in the past because there was a lot of research in the origin of animals, but not so much in the origin of plants. But now there is more and more of these models. I think it’s a very good moment.
Cliff Ragsdale (octopus)
There’s a huge explosion with people who are interested in the brain or who are interested in development and other aspects of cephalopod biology. I kind of think people were always fascinated by cephalopods, captivated by the behaviors of octopus and the adaptive coloration system particularly pronounced in octopuses and cuttlefish.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
It’s a very small community, there are maybe 20 or 30 people working on the animal. You would imagine that small communities are very well connected. We are connected, but not very tightly. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that we are on different continents and we study different questions. We talk to each other and we share tools and genetic resources. For example the genome sequencing and assembly was a collective effort.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
An important thing to highlight in Astyanax is that we have the biennial meeting. Because it’s not a model organism, [everyone is] really [willing] to talk about the system in a very open way, and include new researchers. Particularly for me, when I was finishing my PhD, this was a very dramatic point, because I saw a potential in the system that I can be included.
Nowadays, a lot of people are trying to [investigate] this model [from] the eco-evo-devo perspective. They have realised [that it is important to distinguish between the different Astyanax lineages], because some of the results that they get are related with the lineage, and not particularly with the environment. In these terms, there is a growing number of labs wanting to work in the field, know more about the ecology in situ, learn more about the behaviour, the physiological adaptations.
András Simon (newt)
We are growing to the degree that we have a yearly salamander meeting. Also, there is the larger field of regenerative biology, which is at a decent size now. We just started a new organisation, the International Society for Regenerative Biology, and the inaugural meeting was in Vienna this year. That gives room to different regeneration model overlays, because regeneration at this scale is quite widespread evolutionarily but also randomly distributed. It doesn’t decline with the increase of [organismal] complexity. At these meetings we gather researchers who work with regeneration model organisms, in particular salamanders, including newts, planaria, zebrafish, but also Hydra, cnidarians.
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Would you say it takes a particular sort of character to want to study NMOs?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
The most important thing is the question. Then the techniques and the approach vary depending on the moment.
Sometimes it has been hard to be alone. And at the same time, there is something beautiful about that, because you seem to be a pioneer. It takes something of the more human angle of being an explorer, you know? So I cannot complain. I mean, I complain because it was hard at some points and it would have been faster [in another organism]. But also it was nice to, for many years, say, ‘Oh, you should look at these organisms.’ And maybe some people didn’t believe you and now they say, ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool.’
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
Definitely, it takes a different kind of researcher. To work with these animals, you have to realise that research is going to move forward much more slowly, because you will have to start many things from scratch.
András Simon (newt)
If one is not super naïve, it must be that they are more dedicated to answering a question than just progressing in their career. But I like the field a lot. Because of the lack of tools, I found the field intellectually very mature. People had time to think, that is my impression, and I liked it. Now, of course, there are [more] tools. So the risk is that we’re going to do too many experiments. No, I’m just joking.
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Do you have any additional or broader comments that you might like to share?
Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo (single-celled eukaryotes)
Work with people that are nice people, that are persons before scientists. Whether it’s a PhD, working for a supervisor or collaborators, whatever. You have to have people that you feel confident you can say a stupid thing. And you can laugh together and you can be interested together about the questions. Then everything will be much, much, much better.
Michalis Averof (shrimp)
Over the years, we have developed this idea that model organisms will reveal universal mechanisms, and that we can study most of biology through the model systems that we have chosen. But I am convinced that there is an enormous amount of biology that we are missing, if we rely only on the established models. There are biological phenomena which are not represented in this handful of organisms.
I see these like new continents of biology that are still unexplored. New model organisms will allow us to explore these. Of course, it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take development of tools. But that’s for me the major motivation for going into different systems, because I think there’s biology that we haven’t discovered yet.
Patricia Ornelas-García (Mexican cavefish)
The problem with non-model organisms is the conservation situation. Nobody will catch Mus musculus from the field, they have so many reproductive lines in captivity that they don’t have to. Non-model organisms are in the opposite situation. Most labs [working on them] want to have more wild lines, more related with what is really happening in the field. And if you have 200 labs working [on cavefish], imagine the impact that we can have on the natural population. We published, just at the beginning of the year, a paper [on] size estimation of the fish population in the caves, and it’s maybe around [a few] thousands of fish. And imagine, in the last 10 years, there have been around 200 fish extracted from the caves. So if you imagine a system that has to recover from 20% of the population being lost only because of scientific sampling, it’s problematic.
When you try to make researchers aware of the situation, [they] really believe that the main extinction drivers of this kind of population are not related with our sampling. Most of us really believe that it’s all global warming, or local people extracting water for drink. I’m very surprised, because normally you have to fight this kind of attitude outside the scientific [world].
Thus, it’s important to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Maybe we should consider what we can do to solve the conservation situation. We need to be more aware about the impact of our research and do our best to guarantee the prevalence of this model for future generations. [Because] what makes these organisms amazing also makes them vulnerable, in a way.
András Simon (newt)
I was thinking about what makes an organism model or non-model? Is it a qualitative term, or quantitative? If enough numbers of researchers work on it, is it a model organism? If not, is it not a model organism? What is the definition? I would probably say that [the newt] is a model organism for regeneration, but it’s a non-model organism in the sense that not so many people work on it, although the community is growing.
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A phylogenetic tree of the organisms our interviewees work on.
We couldn’t have succeeded in our effort to make this compilation article without the generous time these researchers were willing to share with us, so our sincere thanks go out to András, Michalis, Paty, Cliff, and Iñaki. We are really hoping that this is just the beginning of our collective exploration of NMOs, and of greater interspecies research collaboration. The more we investigate, the more we can hope to understand how the amazing tree of life is built, interconnected, and how to best attempt to preserve it in all its messy glory.
“I feel like I have the best of both worlds. I’m still very much focused on genes and genetics, which is what I spent a lot of my academic career doing, but with that added benefit of, okay, well, I can see the reason why we’re doing this work.“
Dr Louisa Zolkiewski
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