The Jackson Laboratory

JAX unveils new "Do-it-yourself" Sperm Cryo Kit

JAX^® NOTES Issue 513, Spring 2009

The JAX^® Sperm Cryo Kit is a new approach to sperm cryopreservation: it gives you control over the first steps of the process yet preserves your access to JAX's robust quality testing and cryo storage protocols. With this kit, you cryopreserve the sperm from your strains, and we do the rest — perform quality control testing and safely store your samples. The technology embodied in the kit is the same as that used by our Sperm Cryopreservation and Recovery Service and is based on the novel sperm cryopreservation method recently reported by our scientists (Ostermeier et al. 2008). We have used the method to cryopreserve more than 2,500 unique strains for scientists from all over the world. We distribute many of these strains through our Repository.

Benefits and savings

By using the JAX^® Sperm Cryo Kit, you will accrue the same benefits as if we had cryopreserved your strains through our Sperm Cryopreservation Service: an economical and space-saving alternative to maintaining live mice on the shelf; inexpensive insurance against catastrophic loss due to disease, flood, fire or other disaster; quick recovery and expansion of cryopreserved strains to SPF health status (via in vitro fertilization); and expedient shipping of mice to you and/or your colleagues. The cost of maintaining a colony not under active study can range from $3,000 to $6,000 per year. Cryopreserving strains with the JAX^® Sperm Cryo Kit costs less than $1,200 per strain, resulting in a payback within half a year or less. Cryopreserving the sperm yourself saves about 40% of the combined cost of our Sperm Cryopreservation and Recovery Service and shipping the mice.

Mouse sperm loaded in a straw that is ready for cryopreservation.

Kit details

The kit can be used to cryopreserve strains recoverable on the following inbred or hybrid genetic backgrounds: C57BL/6J, DBA/2J, C3H/HeJ, FVB/J, B6C3F1/J and B6129SF1/J. It contains the primary materials you will need to cryopreserve your strain's sperm: collection dishes, straws and the cassettes, freezing apparatus, cryo-protective media, a detailed instruction manual and extra reagents and containers to perform a practice run. You will need to supply two 10- to 16-week old males for each strain, liquid nitrogen and other materials common to all biological laboratories. Additionally, you — or someone in your laboratory — should know how to dissect a mouse, identify the cauda epididymis and vas deferens, and remove the sperm from these tissues. A brief tutorial is included in the Appendix of the kit's instruction manual.

The kit also includes the use of a pre-paid dry shipper for sending your samples to The Jackson Laboratory. When we receive the samples, we test the fertilization capacity of a sperm sample from each strain and report the results to you. We store the balance of the cryopreserved sperm samples at two separate sites in three tanks for three years. All this is covered by the cost of the kit. (Longer term storage is available for $175/year per strain.)

Three convenient kit sizes

The kit comes in three convenient configurations: a,three-strain kit for $3,550, a six-strain kit for $6,625 and a nine-strain kit for $9,550.

Initially, The Sperm Cryo Kit is available only to customers in the U.S.A. and Canada. We expect to make it available internationally later in 2009. International customers can contact us to register interest. For more information, contact us at 1-800-422-6423, 1-207-288-5845 or jaxservices@jax.org. Alternatively, visit our website.

References

(Authors in bold are JAX scientists.)

Ostermeier GC, Wiles MV, Farley J, Taft RA. 2008. Conserving, distributing and managing genetically modified mouse lines by sperm cryopreservation. PLoS ONE 3:e2792.