246 genetic and biochemical studies has allowed scientists to begin to understand the molecular basis of complex diseases such as cancer and diabetes. Several pharmaceutical companies developed research programs that use simple organisms to identify and validate drug targets. Since the production of newer engineered nanomaterials and their applications has exponentially increased, high-throughput screens (HTS) are required to evaluate their impact on human and environmental health. In the above sections I gave some examples demonstrating the use of Hydra as valuable model system for the dissection of biological processes evoked by metal based nanocrystals. Because of the small size, short generation time, high fecundity and cost effective maintenance, it can also be used for HTS of nanoparticle biocompatibility, environmental and animal impact. Standard microtiter plates can be used for whole animal assays to assess toxicity and identify the underlying mechanisms by simply changing multiple experimental conditions in adjacent wells, such as medium composition, pH, presence of specific inhibitors/competitors/agonists, and the trials can all be run in parallel, in large scale enabling statistical treatment of the data. In addition, the new genomic resources open the way to the molecular toxicology field. Several gene families that defend against chemical stressors have been identified in other cnidarians and include oxidases, various conjugating enzymes, ATP-dependent efflux transporters, oxidative detoxification proteins, as well as various transcription factors (Goldstone, 2008; Goldstone et al., 2006). The modulation of their expression in Hydra