Xenopus genomic data and browser resources

The two species of Xenopus most commonly used in biomedical research are the diploid Xenopus (Silurana) tropicalis and the tetraploid Xenopus laevis. The X. tropicalis genome sequence has been available since 2010 and this year the X. laevis, genome from two distinct genetic backgrounds has been published. Multiple genome assemblies available for both species and transcriptomic and epigenetic data sets are growing rapidly, all of which are available from a variety of web resources. This review describes the contents of these resources, how to locate and download genomic data, and also how to view and manipulate these data on various public genome browsers, with an emphasis on Xenbase, the Xenopus model organism database.