For many years, the frog Xenopus laevis has been favoured by biologists to investigate the mechanism of vertebrate embryonic development. However it has several drawbacks when being considered as a genetic system since it is tetraploid and takes 1-2 years to reach sexual maturity. Recently, investigators have focused on its close relation, Xenopus tropicalis, which is the only diploid species in the Xenopus genus and therefore better suited for genetic approaches. In addition, it has a relatively small genome size (only 10 chromosome pairs) and a short generation time of four months.
Xenopus laevis (left)
Xenopus tropicalis (right)
A joint collaboration between the Sanger Institute and the Wellcome/Cancer Research UK in Cambridge is hoping to support the X. tropicalis genetic and genome effort by an EST sequencing project. This will increase the overall number of Xenopus sequences available as well as provide an entry point to X. tropicalis biology through markers and morpholino antisense technology.
Xenopus laevis (top)
Xenopus tropicalis (bottom)
The Sanger Institute has generated up to 55,000 5' EST sequences from three X.tropicalis cDNA libraries and these clones can be ordered from Geneservice. These sequences are submitted to dbEST, analyzed and stored in a MySQL database. They can be searched using the blast server or downloaded from our ftp site. Blast analysis of the clustered ESTs from the different libraries can also be searched by keyword or EST name using the Clustered EST database.
Queries concerning this project can be sent to trop@sanger.ac.uk.
