González-Jara Pablo, Fontela Tomás, López-Mimbela Esther, Cereceda Marta, Del Olmo Daniel, Moreno Manuel
Animal Facility, Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CIB-CSIC), Madrid, Spain.
Lab Anim. 2017 Dec;51(6):622-628. doi: 10.1177/0023677217705409. Epub 2017 Apr 13.
Surgical transfer of embryos is carried out daily in animal facilities worldwide for the rederivation of mouse strains/lines, among other purposes. Current protocols described in laboratory manuals recommend using a high number of embryos during transfer, typically in the range of 15 up to 25. To optimize the use of resources it is necessary to estimate and relate the effort required and the yield obtained. Here, we analyse the balance between the number of embryos transferred (the effort), and the yield as the number of born pups obtained from surgical embryo transfer. To accomplish this, we have analyzed data obtained during rederivation of nearly one hundred lines of mice to a new animal facility. Our results confirm that the use of increasing numbers of embryos per transfer increases the yields of born pups, as has been described previously in the literature, but they also highlight the disproportionate effort required, i.e. in the number of embryos that needed to be transferred. An estimate of the mean expected yields of surgical transfers and their comparison with the actual observed yields indicated that the balance between effort and yield is optimized when using lower numbers of embryos than in currently used protocols, in the range of 8 to 12. Given the heterogeneous nature of the data presented and analyzed here, which is from a population of mice that may be considered as representative of any animal facility, our optimization approach should help save resources in similar facilities and improve the yields of embryo transfer procedures.
为了实现小鼠品系/谱系的重新培育等目的，全球动物设施每天都在进行胚胎的手术移植。实验室手册中描述的现行方案建议在移植过程中使用大量胚胎，通常在15至25个的范围内。为了优化资源利用，有必要估计并关联所需的工作量和获得的产量。在此，我们分析了移植胚胎数量（工作量）与从手术胚胎移植获得的出生幼崽数量（产量）之间的平衡。为了做到这一点，我们分析了将近一百个小鼠品系转移到新动物设施过程中获得的数据。我们的结果证实，如先前文献所述，每次移植使用越来越多的胚胎会增加出生幼崽的产量，但它们也突出了所需工作量的不成比例，即需要移植的胚胎数量。对手术移植的平均预期产量进行估计，并将其与实际观察到的产量进行比较，结果表明，当使用比当前方案中更少数量的胚胎（8至12个范围内）时，工作量和产量之间的平衡得到了优化。鉴于此处呈现和分析的数据具有异质性，这些数据来自可被视为任何动物设施代表的小鼠群体，我们的优化方法应有助于在类似设施中节省资源，并提高胚胎移植程序的产量。
