Model organisms are life forms used to test biological theories of various kinds in laboratory settings. Research with model organisms muddies the line between models as material objects and models as abstract entities. Model organisms are not fully constructed, since they are evolved beings, but the longer they reside in a laboratory the less they resemble their kin in the wild. At the same time the construction of biological generalities from the research results from one model organism involves an extrapolation beyond species constraints.
The aim of this symposium is to investigate how research practices and theories of life are differently deployed according to different organisms and their affordances.
This is particularly evident in the choice of organism and how it produces not only bio-medical results but also generates historical, cultural, and artistic relations.
For example, the genetics of fruit flies slowly begins to stand in for genetics in general, the deep homologies discovered through cephalopod eyes surprises in part due to their supposed alienness, epigenetic effects in agouti mice give hope for human dietary diseases, the regenerative capacities of the axolotl become bound up with fantasies of immortality, and the horizontal gene transfer among archaea and bacteria undermine our notions of organismal or even philosophical individuality.
In English
14:45 Coffee
15:15 Welcome and Introduction
15:30 – 17:00 Model Limits
Tarsh Bates
Mis/reading a/sexed Individuals:
Holobiontism, Model Organisms and Compulsory Sexuality
Tarquin Holmes
Modelling Endocrinology to Remake Sex and Society? Sexology and the Development of Xenopus Laevis as a Model Organism in Interwar Britain and South Africa
Erin Freedman
Modeling Life Without Organisms
17:00 – 17:30 Coffee Break
17:30 – 18:30 Animal Minds
Héloïse Athéa
Beyond Human Experience:
Animal Models and the Psychedelic Therapy Conundrum
Ombre Tarragnat
Ethodivergence and Becoming-Autistic:
For a Posthumanist Ethics of the Animal Models
18:30 – 19:00 Break
19:00 Keynote: Sabina Leonelli (with Rachel Ankeny)
The Future of the Model Organism Repertoire
11:50 Welcome
12:00 – 13:30 Transfers
Axel Gelfert
Animal Models of Disease and the Pitfalls of Model Transfer
Mariano Martín-Villuendas
Artifactual Role of Model Organisms
Jacqueline Wallis
Modifying Model Organisms to Improve Translation: The Case of the Wildling
13:30 – 14:45 Lunch Break at Aedes Cafe
14:45 – 15:45 Mutants
Anatolii Kozlov
Drosophila in the Lab: Not Quite a Fly, nor a Human
Celeste Pérez-Ben (Online)
Amphibians: A Model for Ancestral Limbed Vertebrates?
15:45 – 16:05 Coffee Break
16:05 – 17:05 Hybrids
Yoshinari Yoshida
Cell Culture Systems and Model Organisms: Articulating the Relationship
Cécile Fasel
Between the Genotype and the Phenotype Lies the Microbiome: Symbiosis and the Making of ‘Postgenomic’ Knowledge
17:05 – 17:30 Coffee Break
17:30 – 18:30 Off World
Anika Bartens
Lichen Matters
Anna Mikkola
Arabidopsis Thaliana in Outer Space
18:30 – 19:00 Break
19:00 Keynote: Jan Baedke
From Lichen to Human Life: Symbiotic Organisms as Models of Social Organization
With
Héloïse Athéa
Anika Bartens
Tarsh Bates
Cécile Fasel
Erin Freedman
Axel Gelfert
Tarquin Holmes
Anatolii Kozlov
Mariano Martín-Villuendas
Anna Mikkola
Celeste Pérez-Ben
Ombre Tarragnat
Jacqueline Wallis
Yoshinari Yoshida
Keynotes by Sabina Leonelli (with Rachel Ankeny) and Jan Baedke
Organized by
Maria Dębińska, Julia Sánchez-Dorado, Ben Woodard
