Evolution of Life - why we conduct research with animals

In accordance with Theodosius Dobzhansky's (1900–1975) motto, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” we study life and its adaptation to changing environmental conditions over time in evolutionary biology.

Life on Earth began almost 4 billion years ago with small individual cells, and over millions of years, multicellular organisms developed into the complex organisms we know today as plants and animals.

The development of life is a story of constant adaptation to the environment, which has changed repeatedly over time, sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

To understand these processes, we are working on the fundamentals of knowledge about the biological mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation. This knowledge is also very important for the problems of today, from questions about the consequences of climate change to personalized medicine, from understanding the dynamics of pandemics to the development of cancer in patients.

Evolution has produced many adaptations and discarded many others. This has given rise to general as well as specialized biological processes. General processes are often found in the early development of organisms, while specializations are found in individual species. In any case, however, the processes must be studied in the context of the entire organism, because it is in this context that they evolved.

This is why studies on animals are essential. On the one hand, they can serve as model systems for humans, namely for biological processes that have common evolutionary origins. On the other hand, we also want to understand the evolution of animals themselves, especially their specialized adaptations in an ecological context. Computer algorithms or studies on isolated cell systems can be very helpful in this regard, but they cannot completely replace research on the whole animal.