Freeze-dried mice: How a new technique could help preservation

TOKYO: Japanese researchers have successfully produced cloned mice using freeze-dried cells inside a technique they think could one day help conserve species and overcome challenges with current biobanking methods.

The particular United Nations has warned that extinctions are usually accelerating worldwide with least a million types could disappear because of human-induced impacts like climate change.

Facilities have sprung up globally to preserve samples from decreasing in numbers species with the objective of preventing their particular extinction by long term cloning.

These samples are generally cryopreserved using liquid nitrogen or kept on extremely low temps, which can be costly plus vulnerable to power outages.

They also usually involve sperm and egg cells, which may be difficult or extremely hard to harvest through old or sterile animals.

Researchers at Japan’s University or college of Yamanashi desired to see whether they can solve those problems by freeze-drying somatic cells – any cell that isn’t a sperm or ovum – and trying to produce clones.

They experimented with 2 types of mice tissue, and found that will, while freeze-drying murdered them and caused significant DNA harm, they could still generate cloned blastocysts : a ball of cells that grows into an embryo.

From these, the particular scientists extracted originate cell lines that they used to create 75 cloned mice.

One of the mice made it a year and nine months, and the group also successfully mated female and man cloned mice with natural-born partners plus produced normal pups.

The cloned mice produced fewer offspring than might have been expected from natural-born mice, and one of the stem cell lines developed through male cells produced only female mice clones.

“Improvement should not be difficult, ” said Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at the University of Yamanashi’s Faculty of Living and Environmental Sciences, who helped direct the study published in the journal Nature Marketing communications this month.

“We believe that in the future we will be able to decrease abnormalities and boost the birth rate by searching for freeze-drying protectant agents and enhancing drying methods, inch he told AFP.

“VERY INTERESTING ADVANCE”

There are some other drawbacks – the success rate of cloning mice through cells stored in water nitrogen or from ultra-low temperatures will be between 2 plus 5 per cent, while the freeze-dried method is simply 0. 02 per cent.

But Wakayama says the technique is still in its initial phases, comparing it to the study that created Dolly the well-known sheep clone : a single success after more than 200 tries.

“We believe the most important thing is that cloned mice have been manufactured from freeze-dried somatic tissues, and that we have attained a breakthrough in this field, ” he said.

While the method is unlikely to entirely replace cryopreservation, this represents a “very exciting advance meant for scientists interested in biobanking threatened global biodiversity”, said Simon Clulow, senior research many other at the University of Canberra’s Centre just for Conservation Ecology plus Genomics.

“It can be difficult and costly to work up cryopreservation protocols and so alternatives, especially those that are less expensive and robust, are really welcome, ” additional Clulow, who was not really involved in the research.

The study stored the particular freeze-dried cells with minus 30 levels Celsius, but the team has previously demonstrated freeze-dried mouse semen can survive at least a year at room temperature and believes somatic cells would do too.

The particular technique could eventually “allow genetic assets from around the world to be stored cheaply plus safely”, Wakayama stated.

The work is definitely an extension of years of research on cloning and freeze-drying techniques by Wakayama and his partners.

Certainly one of their recent projects involved freeze-drying mouse sperm that was delivered to the International Area Station. Even after six years in space the cells were effectively rehydrated back in the world and produced healthful mice pups.