The bounty of EDEN
Cassandra Extavour wants scientists to move beyond the fruit fly. An associate professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard, Extavour heads up the Evo-Devo-Eco Network (EDEN), a collaborative group of researchers devoted to encouraging the study of nontraditional “model” organisms, ranging from sea anemones to crickets to moss. “In experimental research, we usually have to reduce complex problems to simpler ones by making some assumptions,” Extavour said. “The model-organism concept is based on the principle that what works in one organism works in the same way or in similar ways in other organisms. If one is trained to work only with one organism or with one set of tools to solve problems, then we can forget the assumptions that we started off with. Moving between systems keeps you fresh, and keeps you guessing, so that you’ll always be asking yourself ‘How do I know that that is really mutant?’ Or...