Mice are the foundation for numerous advances in medicine, including therapies for cancer, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic and hormonal disorders, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, glaucoma, skin pigmentation diseases, blindness, deafness, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, birth defects, and psychiatric disorders including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.

Xenopus (African clawed frog) is a model organism building our knowledge of vertebrate embryology and development, basic cell and molecular biology, genomics, neurobiology, toxicology and human disease.  Researchers work with frogs to investigate how internal mechanisms affect embryonic development, how they adapt to environmental stress, and the causes of specific…