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November 14-19, 2004

Cryopreservation of mouse germplasm

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
"A. Buzzati-Traverso" Campus
I-00016 Monterotondo Scalo, Rome, Italy

The Istituto di Biologia Cellulare of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-"A. Buzzati-Traverso" Campus and The Jackson Laboratory offer a comprehensive course on cryopreservation of mouse embryos, sperm and ovaries. European participants can apply for financial support provided by the European Union's Framework Programme 5 through the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA) project.

Cryopreservation course

The cryopreservation course is offered to teach methods in cryopreservation for banking of various strains of mice used in research, including inbred, transgenic and knock-out strains. Several methods of cryopreservation are now available and because no single method is adequate for all the various strains of mice being developed, a variety of methods are taught. The course is designed primarily as a "hands-on" laboratory program in which participants learn techniques for the cryopreservation of cleavage-stage embryos, spermatozoa, and ovaries.

Techniques include:

a) Embryo and ovary "slow" equilibrium freezing in plastic cryotubes.

b) Embryo "two-step" equilibrium freezing in plastic straws.

c) Embryo non-equilibrium "ultra-rapid" cooling or "vitrification" in straws without the use of a controlled rate freezer.

d) Sperm freezing without the use of a controlled rate freezer and recovery of frozen sperm by in vitro fertilization.

 

In addition, general principles of cryobiology, development of inventory databases for individual programs, and adaptation of long-term storage systems and cryogenic equipment for different situations will be presented and discussed.