You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey everybody, Shortwave reporter Emily Quang here with NPR Science Correspondent Nell

Greenfield Voice.

Hey Emily.

Hey, so we're going to talk about a very special list of creatures today that includes

worms, fruit flies, mice, and my favorite zebrafish, model organisms.

They are model organisms.

So most laboratory biology is done on just a few organisms, so-called model organisms.

And they are, you know, what most of our understanding of biology comes from experiments with

just these few critters.

I'm wondering now why is it just a few?

Well, you know, some of it's practical, so they're easy to keep in the laboratory.

They reproduce quickly.

It's easy to take care of them.

But most importantly, scientists over the years have worked out how to routinely alter their

genes.

And this can produce all kinds of insights into what that gene does for things like behavior

or diseases or possible treatments.

And all of that can sort of potentially be applied to our understanding of humans.

With these organisms, you could understand what genes did by manipulating them.

And that really became an indispensable part of biology.

Okay, that's Josh Rosenthal.

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