- Monika Gulia-Nuss: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, USA.
It is estimated that the planet earth is host to approximately ten million species of plants and animals with only approximately 1.5 million documented in the Catalogue of Life. However, our knowledge of biochemical, molecular, genetics, and cellular processes comes from the studies of fewer than a dozen organisms. Although focusing our research on these "model" organisms has paid off, the downside is that we know very little about the biology of the vast majority of organisms, the non-model organisms. Non-model organisms are organisms that have not been selected by the research community for extensive study mostly because they lack the features that make model organisms easy to investigate e.g. they cannot grow in the laboratory, have a long life cycle, low fecundity or poor genetics.