The MRC Harwell’s embryo bank has been in operation for over four decades and now holds more than 3,000 unique mouse strains.
This is where scientists have frozen down the genetic resources they have been working with, for future use and to help others avoid duplication. Reaching 3000 frozen strains is an important milestone and is the culmination of our desire to promote a cooperative future in mouse genetics, where unique resources are openly shared. To encourage this ideal, it is ‘free’ to deposit mouse strains in the Harwell archive. It is possible to search for strains in our archive that might be useful for your own research purposes. Alternatively, you can review all publicly available mouse strains from around the world at a single website (www.findmice.org). The repository also offers a range of standalone services, for example, repatriation and IVF recovery that facilitate access to mouse models from the wider scientific community. So, if we don’t have what you want at Harwell we can certainly import it for you. In the ‘twenty 10s’ alone the repository has exported 2,500 mouse strains to investigators on five continents and imported a further 1,100 mouse strains to support biomedical research in the UK. A truly global service!
