Speed expansion service

Expanding colonies to meet increases in demand or to establish dedicated supply colonies is expensive and time consuming. JAX® Services utilizes assisted reproductive services such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) to rapidly expand colonies--saving time and money over building colonies through traditional methods.

Our Speed Expansion Service uses sperm from a small number of males to fertilize oocytes from many females. The resulting embryos are then transferred into pseudopregnant females. When a homozygous male is mated to multiple wild type females, hundreds of heterozygous pups can be produced in a synchronous wave. For researchers needing homozygous mice, another generation of traditional mating will produce mice of the desired genotype.

When only homozygous or carrier females can be used, the number of available females is often the limiting factor in how many pups can be produced. In this respect, IVF has little advantage over conventional breeding. However, since eggs are collected from three-week-old females, the generation interval still can be shortened and a synchronous wave of animals can be produced. For some projects these two factors can still provide sufficient justification to utilize this approach.

Print-Friendly Fact Sheet (pdf)

Still have questions?