Chemical messages turn tadpoles into frogs, toads

The Billings Gazette highlighted a University of Cincinnati project examining the hormones responsible for the growth and development of frogs.

UC College of Arts and Sciences Professor Daniel Buchholz and his students are using the gene-editing tool CRISPR to understand the roles hormones play in a tadpole's dramatic metamorphosis into a frog or toad.

“Their immune system changes. Their hemoglobin changes. Even their eye pigment changes,” Buchholz said. “That’s why frog metamorphosis is a really good model to study hormones and development. It has such a dramatic effect.”

Students are studying African clawed frogs, an animal scientists use as a model system. Buchholz cares for more than 300 of them in various tanks in his lab.

Chemical signals from hormones play a major role in our own growth and development along with regulating processes like our immune system. 

“The more we can learn about frogs, the more we can learn about ourselves. And those are compelling reasons to study animals,” Buchholz said.

Read the Billings Gazette story.

Featured image at top: UC Professor Daniel Buchholz is studying the hormones that regulate metamorphosis in frogs. Photo/Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand