Breeding
Breeding Services
Bioresources offer a free full colony management service for all wild type and genetically modified (GM) animals with animal lines being maintained centrally in a high health status area and supplied for experimental purposes to a separate area of the facility. This service saves you time, ensures we maintain the quality of the animal produced, maintain high and consistent welfare standards, and keeps costs as low as possible. We can breed, maintain and provide any strain to you as required – either your own lines or lines we supply centrally - allowing you to reduce the time you spend managing rodent colonies and focus more time on your research.
We will work with you on a one-to-one to basis to develop and execute breeding plans, troubleshoot difficulties and deliver cohorts of study animals. All of the work is managed through our Colony Management System, E-mus, which streamlines technician workflow, simplifies project management and provides a two-way communication portal for all researchers to direct actions with their colonies, such as setting up matings, requesting animals, arranging biopsies for genotyping and consolidating space
Genetic Quality Control
Genetic drift is common in inbred mouse colonies, it happens slowly, and without control can result in;
- Inbreeding depression, which reduces the breeding efficiency, vigour of the animals and increases cost;
- Unwanted spontaneous mutations becoming fixed in your colonies such that unwanted genotypic effects confound experimental interpretation
Bioresources will produce and supply wild type mice for breeding with GM mice. Our QC program limits cumulative genetic drift as we refresh our foundation stocks either using our own cryopreserved embryos or by acquiring fresh breeding stocks from reliable approved suppliers to replenish our founder breeding stock every ten generations.
Health Monitoring
Our facility operates to SPF (Specified Pathogen Free) standards. Standardised sentinel health screening systems monitor the health status of the animals in the facility. We have a regular and comprehensive screening program. Our Rederivation Service will ensure your animals achieve this health status, which is required for import into our facility.
