Chicken DNA Sequencing For New Biomedical Model Organism to Study Human Lifestyle Diseases
We have been dependently relying on chicken for so many centuries as they are the main source of protein by providing meat and eggs. Let’s not talk about food now. Basically, chickens have been used to study human diseases but this time it has a more vital role for humans – as a biomedical model organism to study “lifestyle diseases” like obesity and diabetes.
You might be wondering why chickens were selected as the new biomedical model organism but not mice and rats. Here’s why:
According from The Scientist:
There are other reasons why chickens, which have already been used to study epilepsy, autoimmune diseases, and the human pigment disorder vitiligo, make good biomedical models, Kuenzel said. For one thing, he noted, like humans, chickens are bipedal, diurnal organisms (unlike mice and rats). Also, embryonic development in chickens takes place largely outside the mother’s body in eggs, making studying that process easier than in placental mammals. “The beauty of the chicken is that you can follow the development and do very detailed expression studies during development,” said Andersson.
Find out more about the biomedical model organism research here.
Picture courtesy of law_keven