I apologize to any readers out there who noticed that the Unlikely Science Heroes were on a bit of hiatus at the beginning of this Summer. This was because my husband and I celebrated the birth of our first child, a sweet little daughter. As a Parent In Training, I have been away from the blog for a few weeks, but in the meantime getting ideas for all kinds of heroes to write about as soon as I figured out how to both be a parent and use the internet at the same time (mission: accomplished.) So in honor of this life-changing reproductive event in our lives, I have decided to in turn honor Xenopus laevis.
I was thinking at first that I would write about the scientist Lancelot Hogben who is officially credited as a statistician, but was also a noted "experimental zoologist," a description from wikipedia which I kind of really love. Hogben was a real nut in my opinion- I'm sorry, but even if you are the one who developed a particular model organism for biological research, you are still kind of a nut if it occurs to you to inject said animal with human pee. While my first gut reaction when learning about Hogben was less than complimentary, it was tempered when I learned more about him. For instance, he was a pacifist during WWI, was adamantly and publicly critical of the heinous eugenics movement, and was super invested in democratizing and popularizing math and science, writing books like this and this.
Oh, and he invented a language.
But I also had trepidation about writing about Mr. Hogben because I have very troubled feelings about any kind of animal testing or animal based science for human benefit. I begrudgingly accept that many animal models are/have been enormously beneficial to humankind and were conducted as ethically and humanely as possible. But on the other hand, we have committed some pretty egregious crimes against our fellow organisms, and even more disturbingly, conducted/are conducting research that was/is silly and pointless and does nothing for anyone but cause the needless suffering of innocent animals. Which is why I decided to honor Xenopus instead of Hogben- it was
Hogben's crazy idea that put Xenopus on the research map, but Xenopus
really did the heavy lifting, and in the following years built a pretty
impressive resume.
Xenopus is not very much unlike us (humans) evolutionarily speaking, which is why it became an important model organism for biological research. Though not as popular a model now, it was most commonly used in studies of developmental biology. Hogben injected human female urine in the dorsal lymph sac of the frog, which could be male or female. If there was a presence of the hormone hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) in the urine, then the female frogs would ovulate and the male frogs would produce spermatozoa. The "nice" thing about this test was that there was not a need to kill the frogs, the way that previous pregnancy tests required the deaths of mice or rabbits. Though, I don't think that Xenopus had the best time even if they didn't go under the axe.
Some other amazing accomplishments of Xenopus include:
-helped Roger Wolcott Sperry describe the development of the human visual system.
-an important model cell used for rapid expression of modified DNA or mRNA, or studies in DNA repair
-the first vertebrate to ever be cloned!
-took a ride on the space shuttle Endeavor!
Despite all the weird sh!t we have to them, in the end Xenopus got the last word
