Sponsored strain distribution service

Let The Jackson Laboratory distribute your mouse strain

The Jackson Laboratory is committed to supporting the efforts of the biomedical research community. The vast majority of the mouse strains available through The Jackson Laboratory have been funded with federal grants and donations from private foundations. In order to allow our repository to accept more mouse strains than current grants and donations permit, we are initiating a Sponsored Strain Distribution program.

The Sponsored Strain Distribution program is a convenient way for investigators to distribute their novel mouse strains to the worldwide research community and also to fulfill the requirements of the new NIH POLICY ON SHARING OF MODEL ORGANISMS FOR BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH. Donating investigators pay a low up-front cost to cover the cost of importation, cryopreservation, curation and distribution of their strains.

An expedited review process is utilized in lieu of the normal strain submission procedure. Several criteria need to be met for a strain to be accepted into the Repository via the Sponsored Strain Distribution program:

  • It is strongly encouraged that details of the phenotype and/or construction of the strain be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
  • A functional allele-specific, PCR-based assay must be provided.
  • The strain must have practicable rates of viability and fertility.
  • The submitter must have the permission of the strain’s creator/owner to donate the strain.

The benefits of this new program:

  • Your strain will be rederived, cryopreserved, and archived, ensuring a resource for current and future research. Your strain will be distributed from the cryopreservation resource, or from a breeding facility if there is sufficient demand for live mice from the biomedical research community.
  • Your strain will be assigned a unique stock number and proper genetic nomenclature, which allows you to readily refer interested researchers to your specific strain.
  • We will adapt or refine necessary existing genotyping protocols and post them on our public website.
  • We will provide a strain data sheet accessible from the JAX® Mice website that describes major features of the mouse, addresses frequently asked questions regarding the use of the mouse (e.g.genetic background, genotyping protocols), and lists of relevant references.
  • We will submit strain information to the Mouse Genome Informatics database.
  • We will strive to ensure that the worldwide research community is aware of the strain's availability and application through an email campaign and inclusion in JAX® Mice literature.

The price for this service is $2,600 for mice that can be cryopreserved as sperm and recovered and distributed as heterozygotes on a C57BL/6J, FVB/NJ, BALB/cJ, BALB/cByJ, DBA/1J, DBA/2J, C3H/HeJ or NOD/ShiLtJ genetic background. Please inquire about pricing for strains on other genetic backgrounds or strains that should be cryopreserved as homozygous embryos (such as inbred strains or strains with multiple genetic mutations).

Print-Friendly Fact Sheet (pdf)

Thank you for your interest in supporting the international scientific effort to share and archive laboratory mice.

Sponsored strain distribution case study

Read about Dr. Peter Mombaerts' use of our service to cryopreserve and distribute over 100 unique mouse strains.
Case study (pdf)

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