Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 15, 2026
Liver Cold Storage and Transplantation in the Cold-Adaptive Daurian Ground Squirrels
Published on: July 3, 2025
Post-Liver Transplantation Management and Specimen Collection in Daurian Ground Squirrels for Single-Cell RNA
Haobin Sun1, Yuqing Qiao2, Zipei Wang3
1Department of Hepatic Surgery and Liver Transplantation Center of the Third Affiliated Hospital, Organ Transplantation Institute, Sun Yat-sen University; Organ Transplantation Research Center of Guangdong Province, Guangdong Province Engineering Laboratory for Transplantation Medicine; Guangdong Key Laboratory of Liver Disease Research, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University.
The Daurian ground squirrel (DGS) offers a superior model for studying liver transplantation, demonstrating prolonged cold preservation and high survival rates. This protocol details DGS care and sample preparation for advanced analyses.
Area of Science:
- Transplantation immunology
- Comparative physiology
- Organ preservation
Background:
- Liver transplantation success is limited by graft injury and immune rejection.
- Current rodent models inadequately represent hypothermia-induced graft damage during preservation.
- The Daurian ground squirrel (DGS) exhibits exceptional tolerance to cold preservation, suggesting its utility as a transplantation model.
Purpose of the Study:
- To establish a protocol for post-surgical care and physiological monitoring of transplanted DGS subjects.
- To standardize procedures for preparing DGS liver graft samples for multi-omic analyses.
- To facilitate research into liver transplantation and disease modeling using the DGS model.
Main Methods:
- Detailed post-surgical animal care and physiological monitoring of transplanted DGS.
- Standardized procedures for liver graft sample preparation.
- Application of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and histopathology for analysis.
Main Results:
- Established essential post-surgical care and monitoring for transplanted DGS.
- Developed standardized methods for preparing high-quality DGS liver graft specimens.
- Enabled transcriptomic and histopathological profiling of DGS grafts.
Conclusions:
- The DGS is a valuable model for liver transplantation research due to its cold preservation tolerance.
- This protocol provides a foundation for utilizing DGS in studying surgical interventions and disease modeling.
- The methodology supports multi-omic data generation for DGS and other specialized organisms.
