Why is it so hard to do research in non-model organisms?

Author: Nili Ostrov

When Henry (Lee, our CEO) decided to pick up a new microbe for his postdoc research, he was not expecting this project to take 6 years. After all, this was the fastest-growing free-living bacteria known! If this won’t accelerate scientific discovery (and postdoctoral success) - what will??

Yea, so it did grow fast.

It grew so fast that it would have cut routine microbiology research time in half, because this Vibrio strain has a doubling time of ~10 minutes - half that of E.coli. But it also came with no user manual; no finalized genome sequence, no plasmids or genetic protocols, and few publications or academic groups to lean on.

Welcome to the world of non-model organisms! You’re in for a multi-disciplinary, go-figure-it-out adventure! 

Why is it so hard?

If you ask any life scientist if you should try researching a non-model organism (for any reason) - you’d get that “good luck with that'' face. Researching a new organism is a notoriously difficult task across all fields of biology. Why is that?

— It’s hard because every organism is a special snowflake.

Yes, every organism has unique features that should be explored. Selecting organisms for research has traditionally been a bespoke, empirical, trial-and-error journey. Model organisms have either been historically domesticated (S. cerevisiae) or a life-long tour-de-force by individual believers who paved the way for the rest of us (C. elegans). It’s a career-defining task, at the end of which you will be the expert on organism X.

— It’s hard because you don’t know where to start.

To reach what most people consider the exciting part of studying a new organism (it can breathe rocks!), you’ll first need to overcome many less exciting serious technical challenges. Those challenges usually take so much time, money and labor to overcome that most organisms (and researchers) never cross the finish line. For example, most molecular biology methods start with a growing culture, so until you define a culture protocol you can’t do much of anything. Once you can grow an organism, you need to insert DNA to do genetics. But you don’t have a protocol, and even if you did - you don’t know which plasmid replicates properly or what antibiotics to use for selection. It can take months or years to figure this out on your own.

— It’s hard because there’s no research community.

By definition, most non-model organisms are unexplored. So you would have none of the support that a mainstream-organism research community would provide, such as centralized databases, cited literature, collaborators and dedicated conferences. It can be quite a lonely journey.

— It’s hard because you can’t get funding.

Since no one yet knows what makes your organism extraordinary, it is extremely hard to get funding to explore non-model organisms. Academic leads are reluctant to have students work for years to get very basic systems working, and will have a hard time securing funds for such groundwork. While industry is more likely to adopt organisms with proven potential, they won’t fund the basic science required to prove that potential.

We started Cultivarium to
make it easier for any researcher
to explore non-model microbes. 

Cultivarium is trying to relieve the pain associated with using non-model microbial organisms. We are developing open source tools and assays designed for use in multiple microbes to minimize trial-and-error time in new species.

We are a new type of nonprofit startup for science research and development: a Focused Research Organization (FRO). That means we are a non-profit organization that thinks and works like a startup. This unique structure helps us effectively invest time and resources into solving the foundational problem in the field of non-model organisms and to release open-source data, protocols, and tools on our portal for the benefit of the scientific community. We couldn’t be more excited to achieve these goals through team-based science.

Sounds like a nice way to do science? It is. We invite you to tell us what you think, use our tools, and expand our collective knowledge of the biosphere.