Relationships are complicated, even in nature. Two unrelated species living close together and interacting for survival is called symbiosis. There are three types of symbiotic relationships: mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.

In a mutualistic relationship, both organisms benefit from the interaction. One example is the relationship between honeybees and flowers. Honeybees drink nectar from flowers, collecting and carrying pollen as they fly from one flower to another. Nectar allows bees to make honey, and spreading pollen helps flowers reproduce. Another example of a mutualistic relationship is between clownfish and sea anemones. The sea anemone provides protection and shelter, while clownfish waste provides the sea anemone with nutrients.

During his time at Roger Williams University (RWU) in Bristol, Rhode Island, Colton Pelletier built a robot that will help simplify data collection for research projects in the lab he worked in—and others—for years to come. Aiding in Colton’s success in the lab was NIGMS funding through the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) program. INBRE funds statewide networks of higher education in IDeA states such as Rhode Island, which have historically received low levels of NIH funding. The program supports faculty research, mentoring, student participation in research, and research infrastructure by connecting primarily undergraduate institutions with research-intensive universities in the state.

Hydras might look like they’re visitors from outer space, but they’re actually Earth-dwelling animals that can be found in fresh water, like ponds or gentle streams. The body of a hydra consists of a thin tubelike stalk that’s about an inch long with several tentacles extending from one end. Some hydras can grow an armlike extension that eventually pops off the main stem to become a new hydra.

Humans have studied hydras for hundreds of years. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, one of the earliest known microscopists, first described them in 1703 when he looked at water samples under a microscope. You can see hydras—whose bodies are about the length of a paperclip—without them, but microscopes help researchers see their shape in better detail. Scientists commonly use hydras as research organisms because of their incredible ability to regrow lost body parts after injury through a process called regeneration.

The Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) is only about as big as a golf ball, but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in its superpower—an invisibility cloak to be exact. Thanks to its symbiotic relationship with the bioluminescent bacteria Vibrio fischeri, it’s able to seemingly disappear from its predators when swimming at night.  

These super-squid live in the shallow coastal waters in the Pacific, like those around the Hawaiian Islands. They’re nocturnal, so they hunt their prey—small shrimp and other crustaceans—at night and hide, often by burying themselves in the sand, during the day while they rest. Although Hawaiian bobtail squid live their short 3-10 month lives around one another, they generally only interact for breeding, and even then, they only reproduce once in their lifetimes and die soon after reproduction.

The friendly-looking axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) doesn’t seem to have much in common with its namesake, Xolotl—the Aztec god of lightning, death, and fire. In fact, axolotls can regrow lost limbs and other body parts like organs and parts of their central nervous systems—which goes against the concept of death!

Those pesky little bugs flying around the overripe bananas in your kitchen may hold the key to understanding something new about how our bodies work. That’s right, the fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) is a widely used research organism in genetics because of its superpower of reproducing quickly with similar genes to people.

Researchers have been studying fruit flies for over a century for many reasons. First, they’re easy to please—just keep them at room temperature and feed them corn meal, sugar, and yeast (or those bananas on your counter!). Second, they reproduce more quickly and have shorter life cycles than larger organisms. A female can lay up to a hundred eggs in a day, and those eggs develop into mature adult flies within 10 to 12 days. A third reason is the simplicity of the fruit fly’s genome, which only has four pairs of chromosomes compared to the 23 in humans. And on a logistical note, the male and female flies are easy to tell apart (genetic studies often require separating males and females, which isn’t an easy feat in all organisms).

"Water bear" or "moss piglet"? No matter what you call them, tardigrades have secured the title of cutest invertebrate—at least in our book. They’re tiny creatures, averaging about the size of a grain of salt, so while you can spot them with the naked eye, using a microscope is the best way to see them. They earned their nickname of water bear and their official name (which comes from tardigradus, Latin for “slow walker”) because of the way they lumber slowly and deliberately on short, stubby legs.

Scientists often use research organisms to study life. Examples range from simple organisms like bacteria to more complex ones such as mice. NIGMS funds studies of research organisms to understand biological processes that are common to all organisms, including humans. Errors in these fundamental processes can cause disease, and better understanding of these malfunctions can aid in the development of potential treatments.

Research organisms may also reveal novel biological processes that can lead to important scientific or medical technologies. For example, researchers studying interactions between viruses and bacteria made a discovery that led to the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) gene-editing system, which was recognized by the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry.

As computers have advanced over the past few decades, researchers have been able to work with larger and more complex datasets than ever before. The science of using computers to investigate biological data is called bioinformatics, and it’s helping scientists make important discoveries, such as finding versions of genes that affect a person’s risk for developing various types of cancer. Many scientists believe that almost all biologists will use bioinformatics to some degree in the future.

However, bioinformatics isn’t always included in college biology programs, and many of today’s researchers received their training before bioinformatics was widely taught. To address these gaps, the bioinformatics cores of the five Northeast IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBREs)—located in Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Vermont, and New Hampshire—have worked together to offer basic bioinformatics training to students and researchers. The collaboration started in 2009 with a project where researchers sequenced the genome of a fish called the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) and used the data to develop trainings.