Horb Receives Renewal Funding for Xenopus Mutant Resource at MBL

Marko Horb, MBL senior scientist and director of the National Xenopus Resource (NXR) at MBL, has received R24 renewal funding from the National Institutes of Health/Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Research Infrastructure Programs.

Research using the amphibian Xenopus, because of unique advantages as an experimental system, has revealed key insights in many domains of biomedical research, including cell biology, development, neurobiology, physiology and signal transduction. This renewal grant will continue a large-scale effort to generate and characterize different Xenopus mutants in key genes related to human diseases, which will help provide significant insights about the causes of these diseases.

Both the NXR and the Horb lab are developing Xenopus models of human disease using CRISPR-Cas genome editing. This renewal grant will allow them to continue their research to generate new models of human disease in Xenopus as well as to create new transgenic frogs. The NXR will continue to host visiting scientists to come and work on the mutant frogs, as a cost-effective approach for the community. Each transgenic line will be developed in close coordination with individual researchers.

This renewal proposal contains four main aims. First, Horb and the NXR will collaborate with Xenopus researchers to characterize more than 200 existing mutants that were developed over the last five years. The mutants cover a wide range of topics that require varied expertise that can only be obtained through interactions with other researchers. Second, they will generate new mutants using CRISPR-Cas as requested by researchers. As the national stock center for Xenopus, the NXR  has the expertise to breed and maintain these mutants. Third, they will generate new transgenic lines that will be used for genome editing. These new lines will allow for more tissue-specific expression of Cas9. Fourth, they propose to develop homology directed repair for more efficient generation of site-specific integration of exogenous DNA. All these aims will help enhance the utilization of CRISPR-Cas gene editing methods in the Xenopus model system.