Preservation of embryos by freezing is useful technique to maintain laboratory animals. In order to establish a SHR embryo bank, we examined the effect of superovulation treatment for SHR females and the suitable preimplantation stages for frozen storage. In addition, the blood pressures of the young derived from frozen embryos were examined.
Mature SHR females were induced to superovulate by gonadotropins (PMSG and hCG) and were mated. Embryos at the two-cell, eight-cell and blastocyst stage were collected from the females. The gonadotropin treatment was effective in increasing the number of embryos except at the blastocyst stage. Two-cell and eight-cell embryos in the presence of 1.5M-DMSO were cooled slowly to - 30°C, plunged into liquid nitrogen and stored. They were thawed rapidly. When the embryos were transferred to pseudopregnant recipients of Wistar strain, approximately 70% developed to live young. All young were suckeled by their foster mothers. The young developed blood pressures as high as naturally delivered SHR.
These results suggest that SHR embryos can be cryopreserved effectively to maintain the strain without losing their genetic characters.
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