Sive et al. present a laboratory manual devoted to the experimentation on Xenopus laevis during early development. This book has arisen from a course taught at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. It corresponds to a compilation of protocols taken from recent years, which have improved with age, and is accompanied by three illustrative videocassettes.
The manual is divided into 14 chapters and contains an appendix with physiological solutions, nucleic acids methods, cautions and a list of suppliers for materials.
The first chapter introduces Xenopus husbandry (feeding, raising tadpoles, diseases, etc.), and is very useful and well documented. Subsequent chapters provide a great deal information on vital equipment, obtaining embryos and embryo manipulation techniques, although the sequence of these chapters is rather confusing.
Various approaches used to manipulate genes expression in Xenopus are outlined in Chapter 3. This forms an essential aspect of modern developmental biology, but in this manual it poorly...
