Supplementary Material for: <b><i>Xenopus</i></b>: An Undervalued Model Organism to Study and Model Human Genetic Disease

The function of normal and defective candidate genes for human genetic diseases, which are rapidly being identified in large numbers by human geneticists and the biomedical community at large, will be best studied in relevant and predictive model organisms that allow high-speed verification, analysis of underlying developmental, cellular and molecular mechanisms, and establishment of disease models to test therapeutic options. We describe and discuss the pros and cons of the frog <i>Xenopus</i>, which has been extensively used to uncover developmental mechanisms in the past, but which is being underutilized as a biomedical model. We argue that <i>Xenopus</i> complements the more commonly used mouse and zebrafish as a time- and cost-efficient animal model to study human disease alleles and mechanisms.当前，人类遗传学家与广大生物医学研究者正快速大规模地识别出大量人类遗传病相关的正常与缺陷候选基因，此类基因的功能研究最适合借助具备相关性与预测性的模式生物开展：这类模型可实现高速验证，解析其背后的发育、细胞与分子机制，并可构建疾病模型以测试治疗方案。本文对蛙属非洲爪蟾（Xenopus）的优缺点进行了阐述与讨论：该物种过去曾被广泛用于发掘发育机制，但目前作为生物医学模型的应用却未得到充分利用。我们认为，相较于当前更为常用的小鼠与斑马鱼模型，非洲爪蟾作为研究人类疾病等位基因与发病机制的动物模型，兼具时间与成本效益，可作为二者的有益补充。