B-roll: Xenopus laevis frogs
Xenopus B-roll items
- Mid-shot female frogs in tanks
- Feeding / eating sequence
- Close-up single frog in a pipe
- Frogs breathing at surface
- Cleaning out frogs sequence
- Frogs laying eggs
- Early embryogenesis
Background notes
Two species of Xenopus clawed frog are often used in research, Xenopus laevis and Xenopus tropicalis. This B-roll features the more commonly used African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis.
In the wild Xenopus laevis is incredibly hardy and can live up to 15 years. At times the ponds that Xenopus laevis is found in dry up, compelling it, in the dry season, to burrow into the mud, leaving a tunnel for air. It may lie dormant for up to a year. It is an adept swimmer, swimming in all directions with ease. It is barely able to hop, but it is able to crawl. It spends most of its time underwater and comes to surface to breathe. Respiration is predominantly through its well developed lungs; there is little cutaneous respiration.
X. laevis is used to study vertebrate embryology and development, basic cell and molecular biology, genomics, neurobiology and toxicology and to model human diseases.
Several features make Xenopus eggs and embryos an outstanding tool in biomedical research. Some of these are that:
- embryos tolerate extensive manipulation (e.g. single cell , germ layer dissections, tissue transplantations
- easy to inject of a range of materials (e.g. nucleic acids, proteins, whole nuclei) into whole embryo or specific cells
- cell fate of each early embryonic cell is known, allowing targeted gene knock-out, knockdown and overexpression studies
More information, images and videos here: https://www.xenbase.org/anatomy/intro.do
Last edited: 14 January 2022 08:06