Symposium overview
The scientific community relies on a small number of model organisms to study larger themes in biology, with the assumption that gained insights can be extrapolated to most other organisms. However, recent advances in our ability to study organisms in the context of their natural environments have revealed that Jacques Monod’s famous quote, ‘What is true for E. coli is true for the elephant’ does not do justice to the vast diversity of life on our planet.
We will highlight research that challenges classical model organisms by looking at fluctuating, natural environments as a rich, relevant inspiration for new experiments in the lab and explore the challenges associated with the establishment of new model systems. This conference will showcase how exploring the wild frontiers of model systems is increasing our understanding of the biology, ecology, and evolution of organisms, ranging from microbes to plants and animals. We hope to bring together lab- and field-focused researchers from ecology, genomics, quantitative cell and molecular biology. Our aim is to debate the possibilities and limitations inherent to these disciplines and to develop unified approaches to gain comprehensive, mechanistic insights into the natural world.
Session topics
- Cell biology
- Genomics
- Technology development
- Development
- Ecology
- Species interaction
- Establishing model systems
- Evolution