SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Leapfrog, Scientist-Style
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
The South African frog known as Xenopus laevis first became a tool of medicine in the 1940s, when the females were used in hospitals worldwide for pregnancy tests: If injected with a pregnant woman's urine, the frog laid eggs.
The aquatic amphibian is far more valuable now as a lab rat, used to study fundamental questions about the development of embryos. Blessed with the unusual ability to regrow the lens of its eye, and laying eggs big enough to study and manipulate, the frog is prized by scientists who want to explore things as diverse as birth defects and organ regeneration.
But unlike other workhorses of science, the frogs did not have a real home base. ... Now, a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will support a national Xenopus center at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
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