Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Spring 5-20-2022

Abstract

The species Xenopus laevis is native to sub saharan Africa, but ever since its discovery in effectiveness in pregnancy tests, the frog now lives invasively around the world. Today the Xenopus Laevis is used mostly in laboratories as a model organism for studying developmental biology (Willigan 2001). The commercialized herbicide Atrazine, has been found to interact with this model organism species in an odd way you might not have guessed (Sanders 2010). Atrazine is primarily absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract and has been shown to have neuroendocrine, reproductive, and developmental effects on experimental animals such as Xenopus laevis (ATSDR 2004). The toxic nature of Atrazine has been found to emasculate male frogs in a study by biologists at the university of California, Berkeley (Sanders 2010). Frogs are extremely susceptible to environmental disturbances due to their permeable skin. This makes them accurate indicators of stressors in the environment (Kerry 2017). This is why we find it imperative to study the effects of Atrazine on frogs, not only because knocking out a species can affect food chains in areas where they reside but it also affects those halfway across the globe, hundreds of miles from its immediate reach.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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