January’s issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols wraps up the second volume of our ongoing Emerging Model Organisms series. The idea behind the series is that technical advances have allowed for great expansion in the range of organisms used for research. Each set of articles is meant to introduce the reader to a new organism, to explain why it’s useful for laboratory research and to provide information on husbandry, genetics and genomics, and a set of basic laboratory protocols. The first set of 23 emerging model systems was collected in a laboratory manual, and the current set of 18 will soon be as well. January’s organisms are:

The Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus): The rabbit is a valuable animal model for a variety of biomedical research areas including in vitro fertilization, early embryology and organogenesis, neurophysiology, ophthalmology, and cardiovascular research. The rabbit is also used as a model for toxicology studies and analyses of drug effects on embryo and fetal development, as well as for research involving the immune system, not to mention its common use in antibody production. Christoph Viebahn and colleagues from the University of Göttingen provide an overview of the rabbit as an experimental system, and protocols for mating and embryo isolation, dissection and fixation of embryos, embryo culture, staining and imaging, immunofluorescence, in situ hybridization, mounting, embedding and sectioning, embryo transfer, artificial insemination and cryopreservation of embryos.

Paramecium tetraurelia: Paramecium makes an interesting unicellular model, as the authors note:

Paramecium tetraurelia is a widely distributed, free-living unicellular organism that feeds on bacteria and can easily be cultured in the laboratory. Its position within the phylum Ciliophora, remote from the most commonly used models, offers an interesting perspective on the basic cellular and molecular processes of eukaryotic life. Its large size and complex cellular organization facilitate morphogenetic studies of conserved structures, such as cilia and basal bodies, as well as electrophysiological studies of swimming behavior. Like all ciliates, P. tetraurelia contains two distinct types of nuclei, the germline micronucleus (MIC) and the somatic macronucleus (MAC), which differentiate from copies of the zygotic nucleus after fertilization. The sexual cycle can be managed by controlling food uptake, allowing the study of a developmentally regulated differentiation program in synchronous cultures. Spectacular genome rearrangements occur during the development of the somatic macronucleus. Their epigenetic control by RNA-mediated homology-dependent mechanisms, which might underlie long-known cases of non-Mendelian inheritance, provides evolutionary insight into the diversity of small RNA pathways involved in genome regulation. Being endowed with two alternative modes of sexual reproduction (conjugation and autogamy), P. tetraurelia is ideally suited for genetic analyses, and the recent sequencing of its macronuclear genome revealed one of the largest numbers of genes in any eukaryote. Together with the development of new molecular techniques, including complementation cloning and an easily implemented technique for reverse genetics based on RNA interference (RNAi), these features make P. tetraurelia a very attractive unicellular model.

Eric Meyer and colleagues from the CNRS have written an overview of P tetraurelia as a model system, and protocols for maintaining cell lines, mass culture, gene silencing, DNA microinjection, immunocytochemistry, and fluorescence in situ hybridization.

We have some new organisms in the works for Volume 3, but would welcome your suggestions.

Cold Spring Harbor Protocols is hosting the movie figures that accompany the new lab manual, Live Cell Imaging, Second Edition, edited by Robert Goldman, Jason Swedlow and David Spector, . These movies are freely accessible to all, and worth a look if you’re interested in seeing the state of the art in time lapse imaging.

Live cell imaging techniques are driving a revolution in biological research. Instead of viewing dead tissues and cells fixed at a particular stage of activity, scientists can now visualize dynamic changes as they happen, permitting a better understanding of complete processes. The revolution has been fueled by the implementation of genetically encoded fluorescent proteins, the subject of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The diverse array of applications benefiting from fluorescent proteins ranges from markers targeted at organelles and protein fusions designed to monitor intracellular dynamics to reporters of transcriptional regulation and in vivo probes for whole-body imaging and detection of cancer. Fluorescent proteins have enabled the creation of highly specific biosensors to monitor a wide range of intracellular phenomena, including pH and metal-ion concentration, protein kinase activity, apoptosis, membrane voltage, cyclic nucleotide signaling, and tracing neuronal pathways. In the December issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, David Piston and colleagues present Fluorescent Protein Tracking and Detection: Fluorescent Protein Structure and Color Variants, a comprehensive overview of the wide variety of fluorescent proteins that are currently available. The article features more than twenty movies of different fluorescent proteins in action and is a great primer for planning imaging experiments. As one of December’s featured articles, it is freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

In addition, the same authors have also contributed Fluorescent Protein Tracking and Detection: Applications Using Fluorescent Proteins in Living Cells. This article provides some general tips for the practical aspects of using and imaging enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) and newer members of the color palette, as well as quantitative imaging of fluorescent proteins and imaging of several fluorescent proteins at the same time. Finally, an overview is provided for the different types of biosensors that have been derived from flourescent proteins.

Both articles are adapted from the spectacular new manual, Live Cell Imaging: A Laboratory Manual, Second Edition which is due out by month’s end.

CSH Protocols December Cover

We’re getting toward the end of the second volume of our Emerging Model Organisms series in Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, and November’s issue brings us a look at the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid and the genus Dioscorea, or True Yams.

Euprymna scolopes, the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid (our cover model this month, see below) is a cephalopod that’s well-suited for study in the laboratory. E. scolopes is primarily studied in three contexts:
1) as a model for cephalopod development–the embryos and protective chorions are clear, making it amenable for the observations and manipulations common in other studied model systems
2) as a model of animal-bacteria symbioses with the luminous marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri
3) as a system for studying the interaction of tissues with light, as the squid features a specialized light organ.

Heinz Gert de Couet and colleagues supply an overview of the Hawaiian Bobtail Squid as a model system, along with protocols for Preparation of Genomic DNA, Confocal Immunocytochemistry, Whole-Mount In Situ Hybridization (parts 1 and 2), and Culture and Observation.

Dioscorea is a large genus of plants that are monocots but that look like dicots, and are closely related to the phylogenetically derived group containing the grasses. It’s interesting evolutionarily because of the position it occupies, as a link between the eudicots and grasses–groups that contain all the model flowering plant species. The true yam is also important as a food crop. R. Geeta and colleagues provide an overview of the genus, and protocols for husbandry, culturing tissues, management of plantlets, controlled crosses, and DNA extraction.

CSH Protocols November Cover

Volume 2 of our Emerging Model Organisms series rolls on in the October issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. This month brings a look at two emerging models, one all-time classic.

Neelima Sinha and colleagues present “The Mother of Thousands” (Kalanchoë daigremontiana), a plant which has the fascinating ability to regenerate and entire organism from somatic cells. The process of forming a somatic embryo outside of a seed environment provides an attractive model system for studying embryogenesis. Kalanchoë is also used in the study of Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), which is an important evolutionary adaptation of the photosynthetic carbon assimilation pathway to arid environments. In addition, natural compounds extracted from tissues of Kalanchoë have potential applicability in treating tumors and inflammatory and allergic diseases, and have been shown to have insecticidal properties. Protocols are provided for fixing and sectioning tissues, in situ hybridization, transformation using agrobacterium, DNA extraction and RNA extraction.

John Werren and colleagues provide The Parasitoid Wasp Nasonia: An Emerging Model System with Haploid Male Genetics. Nasonia is a genus consisting of four interfertile species. They’re particularly useful as a genetic tool for study because females are diploid and develop from fertilized eggs, and males are haploid and develop from unfertilized eggs. This allows geneticists to exploit many of the advantages of haploid genetics in an otherwise complex eukaryotic organism. Protocols are available for field collection, strain maintenance, rearing fly hosts, egg collection, virgin collection and crossing methods, larval RNAi and curing Wolbachia bacterial infections.

As for that “classic” system mentioned above, if you know genetics, then you know Barbara McClintock, and you know that Maize has been a keystone model system for nearly a century. Micheal Scanlon and colleagues have written up Maize (Zea mays): A Model Organism for Basic and Applied Research in Plant Biology, which gives an up-to-date discussion of the state of Maize research.

Phage-based E. coli homologous recombination systems have been extensively developed in recent years, and these recombination-mediated genetic engineering (”recombineering”) methods are now the preferred technique for carrying out genetic modifications in chromosomes and plasmids. Recombineering is efficient and precise and circumvents many of the problems of traditional genetic engineering methods, primarily the need to locate specific restriction enzyme sites. Construction of Gene-Targeting Vectors by Recombineering, from Pentao Liu and colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute gives detailed instructions for using recombineering to construct targeting vectors for the generation of conditional knockout mice. As one of September’s Featured Articles in Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, the method is freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

Our long-running series of articles highlighting emerging model organisms continues in September with three entries, The Starlet Sea Anemone (Nematostella vectensis), Cephalochordates (Amphioxus or Lancelets) and The Western Clawed Frog (Xenopus tropicalis).

The slow rate of sequence evolution, the presumed high degree of preservation of ancestral traits, the ease of culturing, and the availability and experimental tractability of the early embryos have made Nematostella a prime cnidarian model for a number of biological studies. It serves not only as a model system for cnidarians, but also as an important representative of its phylum in comparisons with other lower Metazoa or Bilateria. Ulrich Technau and colleagues provide an overview of Nematostella, and protocols for spawning, in situ hybridization, antibody and phalloidin staining and BrdU labeling.

Cephalochordates, commonly called amphioxus or lancelets, are marine invertebrate chordates. Studies on cephalochordates have answered some long-standing questions concerning the evolution of vertebrates from their invertebrate ancestors and have also generated interesting avenues for further investigation of the evolutionary origin of developmental mechanisms that led to the emergence of the vertebrate body plan. Linda Holland and colleagues provide background on Cephalochordates, along with detailed methods for Amphioxus embryo collection, in situ hybridization, DNA extraction, and RNA extraction and extracting RNA from small amounts of tissue for RT-PCR.

Xenopus tropicalis is a small, wholly aquatic frog that is a diploid relative of Xenopus laevis. It shares many of the advantages of X. laevis as a model organism for studying aspects of vertebrate biology, particularly the genetic, biochemical, and environmental factors that influence vertebrate development from embryonic stages through adulthood. X. tropicalis is also finding uses as an important test species for assessing the impact of environmental toxins and disease on amphibians, which are in decline in many areas of the world due to water-borne pollutants and infectious agents such as the chytrid fungus. Frank Conlon and colleagues have contributed an overview of X. tropicalis, along with protocols for natural mating, in vitro fertilization, and tissue sampling and genomic DNA preparation.

As new imaging methods are developed and our knowledge of neural development deepens, methods for growing neuronal cells in culture where they are readily manipulated and observed become more and more important. In the August issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, Amy MacDermott and colleagues from Columbia University provide a series of protocols describing neuronal culture techniques that are particularly useful for studying synapse formation and interconnection.

Preparation of Coverslips for Neuronal Cultures describes setting up glass coverslips for three different types of cell culture: Mass Culture, which results in an extensive and widespread network of synapses, Microisland Culture, which allows easier identification of synaptically connected neurons, and Macroisland Culture, which strikes a balance between the better survival rates and better identification of synapses offered by the two methods above.

Survival of CNS neurons in culture is usually greatly improved if the neurons are plated on top of a confluent astrocyte layer, as is described in Dissection, Plating, and Maintenance of Cortical Astrocyte Cultures. Under these conditions, neurons attach more firmly and develop a more easily identifiable bi-dimensional neuritic tree than in culture conditions where primary cells are plated on top of collagen, laminin or other cell-free substrates.

Once established the astrocyte layer can be used to in the Dissection, Plating, and Maintenance of Dorsal Horn Neuron Cultures, which are suitable for electrophysiological, molecular and immunocytochemical studies. Dorsal horn neurons can be grown by themselves, or co-cultured with embryonic dorsal root ganglion neurons as described in Dissection, Plating, and Maintenance of Dorsal Root Ganglion Neurons for Monoculture and for Coculture with Dorsal Horn Neurons.

As noted earlier in the week, our featured article focus in August’s Cold Spring Harbor Protocols is on gene transfer into stem cells. The first featured protocol presented a method for using lentiviral vectors as the means for getting your gene of interest expressed. Alhough viral vectors are highly efficient, their use can raise concerns about recombination, immune responses and other safety issues. In contrast, DNA transposons offer an effective, alternative method for nonviral gene transfer that avoids the safety concerns associated with viral vectors. Use of the Sleeping Beauty Transposon System for Stable Gene Expression in Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells from Catherine Krull and colleagues at the University of Michigan provides a method for stable integration and reliable long-term expression of a transgene. Sleeping Beauty transposon-based transfection is a two-component system consisting of a transposase and a transposon containing inverted repeat/direct repeat sequences that result in precise integration into a TA dinucleotide. Like all of our featured articles, this protocol is freely accessible to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

Our featured articles in the August issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols focus on methods for gene transfer in stem cells. Vectors derived from retroviruses are useful tools for long term gene transfer, because they allow stable integration of transgenes and propagation into daughter cells. Lentiviral vectors are preferred because they can transduce non-proliferating cellular targets. These vectors can be engineered to target specific tissues, and an overview of approaches to modify lentivirus vectors for use in gene transfer can be found in Engineering the Surface Glycoproteins of Lentiviral Vectors for Targeted Gene Transfer. Along with this overview, François-Loïc Cosset and colleagues from Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon present a method for targeting hematopoietic stem cells using engineered viral vectors. The article, Hematopoietic Stem Cell Targeting with Surface-Engineered Lentiviral Vectors is one of our featured articles for August, and like all our featured articles, is freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.