The embryonic kidney: isolation, organ culture, immunostaining and RNA interference

Embryonic mouse kidneys develop well in organ culture. This, coupled with the fact that renal organogenesis includes a range of developmental processes, has made cultured kidney rudiments a popular model for the study of organogenesis. Although cultured kidneys do not replicate every event that takes place in vivo, they do allow close observation of events as they happen and they allow easy access for experiments that use drugs, antibodies, exogenous growth factors and interfering RNAs. Renal organ culture therefore offers a much quicker method to address certain problems than would the generation of transgenic mice. Requiring only material from freshly killed healthy animals, it also avoids some ethical problems connected with subjecting living animals to treatments (or the effect of mutations) that are harmful.