A Brief History of Xenopus in Biology

Abstract

Xenopus is one of the premier model systems to study cell and developmental biology in vivo in vertebrates. Here we briefly review how this South African frog came to be favored by a large community of scientists after the explosive growth of molecular biology and examine some of the original discoveries arising from this sturdy frog. Experimental embryology started in Rana but developed in newt embryos for historical reasons. A long lineage of mentorship, starting with Theodor Boveri, Hans Spemann, Fritz Baltzer, Ernst Hadorn, and Michail Fischberg, used newt embryos. In Oxford, Fischberg made the transition to Xenopus laevis because it was widely available for human pregnancy tests and laid eggs year-round, and he fortuitously isolated a one-nucleolus mutant. This mutant allowed nuclear transfer experiments showing that genetic information is not lost during cell differentiation and the demonstration that the nucleolus is the locus of transcription of the large ribosomal RNAs. With the advent of DNA cloning, the great equalizer among all fields of biology, microinjected Xenopus oocytes became an indispensable tool, providing the first living-cell mRNA translation, polymerase II and III transcription, and coupled transcription–translation systems in eukaryotes. Xenopus embryos provide abundant material to study the earliest signaling events during vertebrate development and have been subjected to saturating molecular screens in the genomic era. Many novel principles of development and cell biology owe their origins to this remarkably resilient frog.