Genetic and genomic tools for Xenopus research: The NIH Xenopus initiative.

The NIH Xenopus Initiative is establishing many of the genetic and genomic resources that have been recommended by the Xenopus research community. These resources include cDNA libraries, expressed sequence tags, full-length cDNA sequences, genomic libraries, pilot projects to mutagenize and phenotype X. tropicalis, and sequencing the X. tropicalis genome. This review describes the status of these projects and explains how to access their data and resources. Current information about these activities is available on the NIH Xenopus Web site (http://www.nih.gov/science/models/xenopus/).