Integrin linked kinase (ILK) is a serine/threonine protein kinase implicated in the phosphatidylinositol 3’kinase (PI3’K) pathway. Integrin linked kinase has been investigated in different organisms such as mammalian systems (human, mice, rat), insects (Drosophila) and nematodes (Cenorhabditis elegans), however to date little data regarding ILK research on amphibians has been reported. In...

In eggs of Xenopus laevis, dorsal development is activated on the future dorsal side by cortical rotation, after fertilization. The immediate effect of cortical rotation is probably the transport of a dorsal determinant from the vegetal pole to the equatorial region on the future dorsal side. However, the identity and action of the dorsal determinant remain problematic. In the present experimen...

Xenopus laevis is a long established model organism for developmental, behavioral and neurological studies. Herein, an updated genome-wide survey was conducted using the ongoing genome project of Xenopus laevis and 106 non-redundant Basic Helix-Loop-Helix (bHLH) genes were identified in the Xenopus laevis genome databases. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment statistics showed 51 significant GO annota...

The African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, is a versatile model for biomedical research and largely similar to mammals in terms of organ development, anatomy, physiology, hormonal signaling mechanisms. Steroid hormones control variety processes their levels are regulated by hydroxysteroid dehydrogenases (HSDs). subfamily 20β-HSD type 2 enzymes currently comprises eight members from teleost fish m...

Oct-1 and a second, previously unidentified octamer-binding protein (Oct-R) have been identified in extracts of Xenopus laevis oocytes and embryos. Oct-1 does not bind to the octamer motif associated with certain Xenopus laevis histone H2B gene promoters, whereas Oct-R binds well to this motif, but only in the sequence context of the H2B gene promoter.

Several in vitro systems exist for the induction of animal caps using growth factors such as activin. In this paper, we compared the competence of activin-treated animal cap cells dissected from the late blastulae of Xenopus tropicalis and Xenopus laevis. The resultant tissue explants from both species differentiated into mesodermal and endodermal tissues in a dose-dependent manner. In addition...

Microarrays have great potential for the study of developmental biology. As a model system Xenopus is well suited for making the most of this potential. However, Xenopus laevis has undergone a genome wide duplication meaning that most genes are represented by two paralogues. This causes a number of problems. Most importantly the presence of duplicated genes mean that a X. laevis microarray will...

Xenopus laevis is the model of choice for evolutionary, comparative, and developmental studies of immunity, and invaluable research tools including MHC-defined clones, inbred strains, cell lines, and monoclonal antibodies are available for these studies. Recent efforts to use Silurana (Xenopus) tropicalis for genetic analyses have led to the sequencing of the whole genome. Ongoing genome mappin...

Abstract In plants high affinity transport proteins mediate the essential of ammonium across membranes. Arabidopsis thaliana six these AMmonium Transporters (AMTs) are encoded by genome. All them show a unique expression pattern. While most AMTs highly expressed in root, AtAMT1;4 is limited to pollen grains and tube. Here, we addressed characteristics heterologous Xenopus laevis oocytes system....

Repeated within the intergenic spacers that separate adjacent ribosomal RNA (rRNA) genes in Xenopus laevis are several distinct sequence elements. These include transcription terminators, "region 0" repeats, "region 1" repeats, duplicated spacer promoters, and 42-bp enhancer elements that are embedded within 60 or 81-bp repeats. All have been reported to stimulate RNA polymerase I transcription...