The fact that significant research already existed for a given organism would encourage new researchers to choose it for further study, and so eventually a few model organisms became the basis for most genetics research.
This may raise intriguing questions, such as: why has this particular object (this particular molecule, microbe or model organism) become such an object of desire, such a fetish: the sole and life-long target of the scientist's cupido sciendi?
We also hope that these articles will prepare a more unified family of biologists to anticipate the research possibilities of a not-too-distant future, when the distinctions between model and non-model organisms become blurred.
The web resources on model organisms have become increasingly enriched in both the amount of data and available analysis tools.
Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, transgenic model organisms have become powerful tools for the study of the basic biology of proteins or to generate in vivo models for diseases [ 1].
Genome-scale resources for non-traditional model organisms have become a reality over a short period of time, due in a large part to the commercialization of sequencing-by-synthesis (also called next-generation sequencing) technology [ 7].
This unicellular model organism has become even more attractive for the characterization of phenotypic plasticity as several epigenetic mechanisms have been described that allow differentiation of lineages into different cell states, which are reminiscent of developmental differentiation processes in multicellular organisms.
Consequently, sequencing the normalized mRNA pools of various non-model organisms has become increasingly popular amongst researchers ([ 11– 15] and references therein).
Recent advances in genomics, in particular next generation sequencing, mean that generating sequence data for non-model organisms has become accessible both in terms of timescale and price [ 5, 6].
The broad-headed skink and, to a lesser degree, the five-lined skink have become model organisms for the study of behavioral ecology.
