Developing embryos of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis. All the embryos start out at the two-cell stage and the movie covers approximately 48 hrs at which time the embryos begin to hatch from the eggs. Xenopus leavis is widely used in biomedical research and many important discoveries regarding the mechanisms and molecules that control animal development were made using Xenopus.
Movie was taken and processed by Nipam Patel. Chenbei Chang (University of Alabama School of Medicine) provided the embryo collection. Filming was done in the Embryology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. Imaged on a Zeiss Lumar microscope using a SPOT Flex camera. Time-lapse created using Quicktime 7 Pro.
