RESEARCH ARTICLE Inbreeding Ratio and Genetic Relationships among Strains of the Western Clawed Frog, Xenopus tropicalis Takeshi Igawa1¤*, Ai Watanabe1, Atsushi Suzuki1, Akihiko Kashiwagi1, Keiko Kashiwagi1, Anna Noble2, Matt Guille2, David E. Simpson3, Marko E. Horb4, Tamotsu Fujii5, Masayuki Sumida1 1 Institute for Amphibian Biology, Graduate School of Science, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan, 2 School of Biological Sciences, Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Science, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom, 3 The Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, The Henry Wellcome Building of Cancer and Developmental Biology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 4 Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering and National Xenopus Resource, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA, United States of America, 5 Department of Health Sciences, Faculty of Human Culture & Science, Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan ¤ Current Address: Division of Development Science, Graduate School of International Development and OPEN ACCESS Cooperation, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan *
[email protected] Citation: Igawa T, Watanabe A, Suzuki A, Kashiwagi A, Kashiwagi K, Noble A, et al. (2015) Inbreeding Ratio and Genetic Relationships among Strains of the Western Clawed Frog, Xenopus tropicalis. PLoS Abstract ONE 10(7): e0133963. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0133963 The Western clawed frog, Xenopus tropicalis, is a highly promising model amphibian, espe- Editor: Gert Jan C. Veenstra, Radboud University cially in developmental and physiological research, and as a tool for understanding disease. Nijmegen, NETHERLANDS It was originally found in the West African rainforest belt, and was introduced to the research Received: January 8, 2015 community in the 1990s.