Usually the species, class, and age of the experimental animal should be the same as the animals to which the data will be applied. Bioassays don't always involve live animals but some type of biological system must be used such as tissue cultures or cells. The sea urchin is the animal of choice for this experiment. The idea of developing bioassays using sea urchins is to show how living organisms can be used to set quality standards. Specifically the mortality and mitotic rates will be observed and measured.
Sea urchins produce a prodigious number of hardy gametes and can be easily seen with naked eye.
There are many studies using sea urchins in bioassays, but the studies tend to gravitate around the effects of heavy metals and increased pH on embryonic development. We hope that students may use this format to develop their own strategies for bioassays. A deuterostome is an organism which undergoes radial cleavage during gastrulation. Humans are also deuterostomes. Sea urchin gametes are relatively the same size as human gametes.