Welcome to the Ascidian Stock Center Home Page
Ascidians are an emerging model system for the study of embryology, gene regulatory networks, chordate evolution and comparative physiology. Ascidians have great potential as a model system, but they present unique experimental challenges. One of the limitations of ascidians as an experimental model is the dependence of most of the ascidian community on wild-caught animals. The Smith lab has established an ascidian culturing facility at the marine laboratory of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) in order to provide a supplemental source of Ciona (C. intestinalis and C. savignyi) adults for research laboratories. In collaboration with the laboratory of Michael Levine at UC Berkeley , we are generating a set of stable transgenic animals that carry tissue-specific fluorescent proteins.
The ASC provides
- wild type C. intestinalis and C. savigny to the research community.
- stable transgenic animals expressing tissue-specific fluorescent proteins.
The ascidian stock center is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (R24GM075049). Please acknowledge the Ascidian Stock Center in any resulting publications.