What is frozen mouse sperm generally used for in laboratories? Why is it important?
There are many thousands of mouse strains in the world and more are being made daily as models to help us understand and improve the human condition. The cost of making these animals is very high; the research done with them long and painstaking. Once this resource has been made and (some) data acquired, there is a need to maintain these novel mice strains so that they can be provided to other scientists as new ideas develop allowing these strains to be used again and the previous data built on. To keep these strains as live mice “on the shelf” is not viable if they are not being actively worked on; i.e. resources are limited. Not archiving them would be a massive intellectual and financial resource loss to the worldwide scientific community. Hence the need to develop a viable, cost effective system for managing mice was major goal for us. 2. What are the problems researchers currently encounter when using frozen mouse sperm? We should point out that both mouse sperm and early embryos
