Biological similarity of humans and other animals

Although humans and animals (technically "not-human animals") may look different, at a physiological and anatomical level they are remarkably similar. Animals, from mice to monkeys, have the same organs (centre, lungs, encephalon etc.) and organ systems (respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous systems etc.) which perform the same functions in pretty much the same style. The similarity ways that nearly ninety% of the veterinary medicines that are used to care for animals are the same as, or very similar to, those adult to treat human patients. There are minor differences, only these are far outweighed by the similarities. The differences tin give of import clues nearly diseases and how they might be treated – for instance, if we knew why the mouse with muscular dystrophy suffers less muscle wasting than homo patients, this might lead to a treatment for this debilitating and fatal disorder.

human-animal-similarity
At a physiological and anatomical level, humans and other animals are remarkably similar

We share approximately 99% of our DNA with mice (1), and moreover, we can utilize "knockout" mice to work out what upshot private human genes have in our body. Nosotros do this by "turning off" 1 of the genes in a mouse, mutual to a human, and seeing what event this has on the mouse. Past recreating man genetic diseases in this style we can begin to look for treatments.

Nobel Prizes and fauna research

For just over a century the Nobel prize has been awarded each year in recognition of the earth's greatest medical advances. Of the 108 Nobel Prizes awarded for Physiology or Medicine, 96 were direct dependent on animal research. Fauna enquiry underpinned the very outset Nobel Prize to exist awarded for Physiology or Medicine to Emil von Behring in 1901 for developing serum therapy against diphtheria, every bit it did the nearly contempo awarded in 2016.

Beast model explained

The role of the animal model is neatly explained in "The Animal Research War", past Michael Conn and James Parker (2):

If y'all are going to study a human being disease you can't, for upstanding reasons, perform the initial piece of work in humans; you have to develop a model. Some models may be in vitro – literally, in glass tubes – just as you acquire more and more, you must eventually test ideas in vivo– in living animals. That ways you take to accept a way of producing the affliction that allows you to report it.
Let'south consider AIDS, one of Podell's interests. Y'all could take its causative agent, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), grow it in a examination tube, and kill information technology by pouring bleach on it. Practise you now have a mode to kill HIV? Yes, y'all do. Do you accept a treatment that can exist used in humans? Admittedly non: bleach is toxic. Killing HIV in a test tube and killing it in a living fauna are two very unlike accomplishments.
To complicate things further, viruses grow differently in test tubes than in humans. Humans have an allowed system: test tubes exercise non. A virus growing in a examination tube is not a skilful model for the homo disease, only drugs that don't impale the examination tube virus probably won't piece of work in humans either – and these might be eliminated from further consideration.
Animal models allow closer approximation to a human being response. They are not perfect, of course; animals host different diseases and different responses. While the fundamentals of life are the same – there is a 67 percent similarity between the Dna of humans and earthworms – there are differences in species and even in private animals. Some animals are good human-like models for 1 matter and some for some other; some have a cardiovascular system that is similar to humans while others have similar peel.

Current examples of animal research in medicine

Observe hundreds of examples of how creature studies have contributed to medical breakthroughs, please see our Research Index, which lists all our posts categorised by either the species involved, or the disease addressed.

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(ane) – "The measure of man" – http://world wide web.sanger.air-conditioning.uk/Info/Printing/2002/021205.shtml

(2) – Conn, P.M. & Parker, J.V., 2008, The Brute Research War, Palgrave Macmillan