The Xenopus genus of African frogs, commonly known as the African clawed frog, comprises more than 20 species of frogs with varying polyploidy levels. Xenopus has unique features such as the absence of tongue, visible ear, and vocal sac. X. tropicalis is a suitable model for genetic studies because of its smaller genome size. The genome of X. tropicalis consists of various repetitive sequences like tandem repeats, interspersed repeats, transposons, and retrotransposons that can be utilized to understand their importance in genome function and organization. One such repeat which is not well studied in X. tropicalis is mirror repeat. The present study aims to determine the mirror repeats within the fibroblast growth factor8 gene of X. tropicalis. A simple manual bioinformatics approach was applied to identify the mirror repeats in the five exons and different regions of the fgf8 gene. We found 245 mirror repeats of significant length in the different regions of fgf8 gene and these mirror repeats are not only limited to the fgf8 gene of X. tropicalis but are also well distributed in the genome of X. tropicalis, X. laevis, Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster. Further studies will help us determine the nature and function of these mirror repeats in the genome.

Fibroblast growth factor, Mirror repeat, Repetitive sequences, Xenopus tropicalis