Cryo-storing research lines of chicken to eliminate breeding and save genetic resources

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Avian reproduction differs considerably from mammalian reproduction and therefore, mammalian reproductive technologies are not transferable to birds. Discovering a way to freeze avian reproductive cells and subsequently bring back a flock will help the preservation of endangered breeds of poultry, increase food security from disease outbreaks and reduce animal usage in research.Research chickens are currently bred in large numbers across the world in order to maintain a genetically diverse population and prevent problems with inbreeding. In other research species, reproductive materials are frozen to secure future availability while reducing the numbers of animals used in research and maintaining the genetics of the species. Additionally, when there is a high demand for particular research animals and many generations are created, care is required to ensure that the genetics of the animal don't become different from generation to generation by random chance, which is a common problem when maintaining research animals. Our project will validate a new technology to freeze chicken reproductive cells and later bring back a genetically diverse research flock from the frozen material. We use 'host' eggs from our sterile chicken line and transfer the frozen reproductive stem cells from a different chicken breed into these eggs. The adult bird will look like the sterile line externally, but will lay eggs of the transferred chicken breed. As mentioned previously, the adult birds will only have their reproductive cells changed to the transferred cell's genetics, and therefore will be largely unaffected. We will also look to introducing genetically modified donor chicken cells into the sterile lines host eggs to refine the overall life experience of all our breeding stock. In this project, we will optimise how to freeze the reproductive cells using three research chicken breeds currently kept at the Roslin Institute. We will next show that a single surrogate host parent can lay eggs that come from many donor parents. This result will show that we will be able to bring back a genetically diverse chicken flock. Finally, we will show that we can bring back a pure flock of chicken from frozen material and will verify the fertility and health of the flock. With this information, we will be able to confidently biobank research flocks of poultry.