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Research Article |
Division of Animal Science,4
National Swine Resource and Research Center,5
Office of Animal Resources,6 Department of Veterinary Pathobiology,7
Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences,8 University of MissouriColumbia, Columbia, Missouri 65211
Department of Epidemiology,9 GSPH, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261
Department of Medicine,10 Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02114
Thomas Starzl Transplantation Institute,11 Department of Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261
ABSTRACT
Ithas been notoriously difficult to successfully cryopreserve swine embryos, a task that has been even more difficult for in vitro-produced embryos. The first reproducible method of cryopreserving in vivo-produced swine embryos was after centrifugation and removal of the lipids. Here we report the adaptation of a similar process that permits the cryopreservation of in vitro-produced somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) swine embryos. These embryos develop to the blastocyst stage and survive cryopreservation. Transfer of 163 cryopreserved SCNT embryos to two surrogates produced 10 piglets. Application of this technique may permit national and international movement of cloned transgenic swine embryos, storage until a suitable surrogate is available, or the long-term frozen storage of valuable genetics.
assisted reproductive technology, early development
1 Supported by the National Center for Research Resources (RR18877, R.S.P.) and other Institutes at the NIH via the University of Iowa (HL51670, R.S.P.) and directly to Pittsburgh (DK64207, Y.D.), an unrestricted gift to the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute from the Robert E. Eberly Program for Transplant Innovation (Y.D.), a Missouri Life Sciences Fellowship (S.K.), and Food for the 21st Century (R.S.P.).
2 Correspondence: Randall S. Prather, 920 East Campus Dr., E125E ASRC, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. FAX: 573 884 7827; pratherr{at}missouri.edu
3 These authors contributed equally to this work.
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