@misc{oai:repo.qst.go.jp:00069066,
 author = {Kito, Seiji and Oota, Yuki and Kaneko, Yumiko and Yano, Hiroko and Shiomi, Tadahiro and Shiomi, Naoko and Shimada, Yoshiya and Sakai, Kazuo and 鬼頭 靖司 and 太田 有紀 and 金子 由美子 and 矢野 浩子 and 塩見 忠博 and 塩見 尚子 and 島田 義也 and 酒井 一夫},
 month = {Jul},
 note = {In radiation biology, experiments using animals are inevitable for understanding radiation effects at whole body level. Especially, use of genetically modified (GM) mice in radiation biology has been explosively increased in the last two decades, and an efficient system for maintenance of these animals has become a crucial issue in many radiobiological research institutes. In the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, the Advanced Animal Research Section has been collaborating with many research groups to facilitate whole animal experiments by application of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). The ARTs applicable to radiation research includes (1) production of new radiosensitve GM animals, (2) short and long term cryopreservation of embryos, (3) synchronous production of large number of animals, (4) domestic and international shipping of animals by way of cryopreserved embryos, and (5) cleaning of animals infected with various pathogens. An example of practical application of ARTs is simultaneous production of large animal colony by in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer (IVF-ET) system. This technique fits well for reproduction of GM mice, such as gpt-delta transgenic mice and aprt (adenine phosphorribosyltransferase) heterozygous mice used frequently for investigating radiation-induces mutagenesis in various tissues. Because of infertility derived from behavioral defect in aprt deficient homozygous (-/-) animals, they have to be bred in the colony of the heterozygous (+/-) and wild type (+/+) parents. However, maintenance of +/- animals requires laborious maintenance of both +/- and +/+ mice followed by genotyping. By application of IVF-ET to +/+ females and only two -/- males, we successfully obtained large stock of +/- aprt embryos (>500). These embryos were cryopreserved and, upon request, predetermined number of animals can be supplied without genotyping, resulting in maintenance of animals less expensively, less laboriously and more efficiently than conventional methods. Although we found some limitations in ARTs for practical application, we are currently making effort to improve our ARTs further for radiation research., 13th International Congress of Radiation Research},
 title = {Application of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) for radiobiological research},
 year = {2007}
}