Showell Chris, Conlon Frank L
Carolina Cardiovascular Biology Center and Department of Genetics, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
Genesis. 2007 Jun;45(6):418-26. doi: 10.1002/dvg.20286.
Xenopus tropicalis is rapidly being adopted as a model organism for developmental biology research and has enormous potential for increasing our understanding of how embryonic development is controlled. In recent years there has been a well-organized initiative within the Xenopus community, funded largely through the support of the National Institutes of Health in the US, to develop X. tropicalis as a new genetic model system with the potential to impact diverse fields of research. Concerted efforts have been made both to adapt established methodologies for use in X. tropicalis and to develop new techniques. A key resource to come out of these efforts is the genome sequence, produced by the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute and made freely available to the community in draft form for the past three years. In this review, we focus on how advances in X. tropicalis genetics coupled with the sequencing of its genome are likely to form a foundation from which we can build a better understanding of the genetic control of vertebrate development and why, when we already have other vertebrate genetic models, we should want to develop genetic analysis in the frog.
热带爪蟾正迅速成为发育生物学研究的模式生物，在增进我们对胚胎发育调控方式的理解方面具有巨大潜力。近年来，热带爪蟾研究群体开展了一项组织有序的计划，主要由美国国立卫生研究院提供资金支持，旨在将热带爪蟾开发成一种新的遗传模型系统，有望对多个研究领域产生影响。各方齐心协力，既对现有方法进行调整以适用于热带爪蟾，也开发新技术。这些努力的一项关键成果就是基因组序列，由美国能源部联合基因组研究所完成，在过去三年里已以草图形式免费向研究群体公开。在本综述中，我们重点关注热带爪蟾遗传学的进展及其基因组测序如何可能形成一个基础，使我们能够更好地理解脊椎动物发育的遗传控制，以及为何在我们已经拥有其他脊椎动物遗传模型的情况下，仍要开展对青蛙的遗传分析。
