Sperm Cryopreservation

New Service Available

The Mouse Genome Engineering Core Lab now offers sperm cryopreservation and recovery service. We can provide a truly reliable and cost-effective method for preserving and recovering sperm from mouse strains commonly used to make knockout and transgenic mice. This service helps to reduce expenses and facility space requirements associated with maintaining live colonies of strains not under current investigation.
Until recently, available sperm cryopreservation methods have resulted in poor fertilization and have not proven economical for the recovery of live mice. We use the Jackson Laboratory’s new protocol suitable for all commonly used inbred and hybrid genetic backgrounds. For sperm from FVB mice cryopreserved using our service, in vitro fertilization (IVF) rates of 65% or greater are typical.

The protocol requires only two males from your colony.
For a price of $250, we offer cryopreservation with a visual assessment of frozen sperm thawed from one straw. For an additional $250 a quality control check includes an IVF test (to two-cell embryos) to verify fertilization capacity.

• A minimum of 18 straws of sperm will be inventoried for each strain.
• Three years of liquid nitrogen storage.
• Cryopreservation service is $250 per mutant strain
• Dramatically reduces the cost of cryopreserving and recovering mouse strains through embryo cryopreservation
• IVF-based recovery allows direct colony expansion.
• Protection against catastrophic loss due to disease, fire, flood or breeding accidents
• Combined with Sperm Recovery Service, permits efficient distribution of your strain to other investigators as frozen embryos or specific pathogen-free (SPF) live mice strains

The price for recovery of live mice is $800 in most instances, but does depend on strain background. A typical recovery attempt yields 10 or more mice, though no quantity is guaranteed. Weaned SPF animals are typically available nine to 12 weeks after recovery.

 Dramatically reduces the cost of cryopreserving and recovering mouse strains using fertilized embryos

• IVF-based recovery allows you to directly expand a colony to produce large numbers of age-matched mice
• Requires only two male mice from your colony
• Inexpensive insurance against catastrophic loss due to disease, fire, flood or breeding accidents
• For strains not under active study, sperm cryopreservation yields a payback and frees up space to perform other research

• Sperm cryopreservation is $250 and includes QC of thawing one straw and evaluating the sperm.
• For an additional $250, QC will be performed using IVF from frozen sperm and fresh oocytes to two-cell embryos.
• Additional years of storage can be purchased for $100 per year.