Frog – Muscle
WELCOME to the frog muscle homepage! Xenopus (pronounced, zen-uh-pus) is a genus of mostly aquatic frog species native to Sub-Saharan Africa. While these frogs can be kept as pets, they are perhaps best known for their usefulness as a model organism. This is an animal used to study developmental biology, toxicology, and even disease, often in the hopes of understanding more about these processes in humans.
Here, we focus on everyone’s secret favorite tissue: muscle. Why use frogs to study the muscles of humans, or any animal for that matter? Aren’t the muscles of frogs and humans different? Yes, but they are more similar than you might think. Frogs and humans share many complex anatomical structures of muscle, including the heart and skeletal muscle connected to bone. Additionally, there are many advantages to using frogs in place of, say, flies, worms, or mice. For example, while all of the these animals have muscle, only frogs and mice have intricate muscular systems connecting to bone. Also, compared to mouse embryos, Xenopus embryos are inexpensive, abundant (a single Xenopus mother can lay thousands of eggs!), and experimental manipulations to the embryo itself are relatively straightforward. These are only a few reasons why a scientist might choose to use frogs instead of another animal to answer research questions.
IMPORTANT: Almost all images within are hyperlinks! Click on images to learn more about different aspects of this animal, and how it can be used to shape our understanding of human muscle development.
Direct links:
Xenopus Background Information