Full-Term In Vivo Development of Frozen-Thawed Mammalian Diapausing Embryos

Embryonic diapause is widespread among mammals. This is the first report of successful post-thaw in vivo development of mammalian embryos cryopreserved at the diapause stage using mouse as a model species. Live offspring were obtained after cryopreservation of murine embryos and their transfer to pseudo-pregnant recipients. The sex ratio at birth was male-skewed, and the offspring were fertile. The results may open new possibilities for applying the Genome Resource Banking concept to diapausing mammalian species.