About Us

The European Xenopus Resource Centre (EXRC) is situated in Portsmouth, United Kingdom and provides tools and services to support researchers using Xenopus models. Funded by the Welcome Trust, NERC and BBSRC. The EXRC depends on researchers to obtain and deposit Xenopus transgenic and mutant lines, Xenopus in-situ hybridization clones, Xenopus specific antibodies and other resources with the centre.

EXRC staff perform quality assurance testing on these reagents and then makes them available to the community at cost. EXRC also supplies wild type Xenopus, embryos, oocytes, egg extracts, X.tropicalis Fosmids, X.laevis BACs and ORFeomes. A list of what is available can be found here, but if you don’t see what you need, call us: if we can help, we will.

Strategy Board Members with the EXRC management team. Strategy board members: Prof. Enrique Amaya (University of Manchester, UK); Prof. Rob Grainger (Virginia University, USA); Dr. Marko Horb (NXR, USA); Prof. Elizabeth Jones (University of Warwick, UK); Prof. Paul Krieg (University of Arizona, USA); Prof. Anna Philpott (University of Cambridge, UK); Dr. Nicolas Pollet (CNRS, France); Prof. Atsushi Suzuki (Epigenome Network Research Center, Japan).

Staff from 4 Xenopus resource centres meet up at the International Xenopus Conference in France, 2013.

The EXRC is situated at the top of Saint Michael’s Building (white building), at the heart of Portsmouth (on the South coast of the UK) just over an hour from London.

Occupying 350 square meters, the centre has the capacity to hold up to 18000 animals including wild type animals as well as transgenics and mutants. The EXRC’s storage facilities hold serveral DNA/Sperm libraries and these can be increased with demand. There are also dedicated laboratory and office spaces where EXRC staff and visitors work.