A simple technique for skin grafting rats.

Abstract

Skin grafting is often used routinely to check the homozygosity of inbred strains of laboratory animals. Brown (I963) described a successful method of skin grafting in mice using the Waldemar punch to prepare both graft and graft bed, but the technique has not proved to be successful in rats due to the toughness of the back skin in this species. Bailey & Usama (1960) described a rapid technique of grafting on the tails of mice, which has a number of advantages. As many as 7 or 8 grafts can be fitted on each tail, the technique is simple, and it causes the minimum amount of distress to the animals. This paper describes Bailey & Usama's method as applied to rats. The rats to be grafted should preferably be between 4 and 6 weeks old at the time of the operation; older animals can be grafted, but with a certai n amount of difficulty as the tail skin becomes very tough. The rats are anaesthetised (intraperitoneal pentobarbitone sodium, 'Nembutal', 4 mgjlOO g bodyweight) and laid out on a sterile surface, ventral side up. The tails are cleaned as far as possible by swabbing them with a disinfectant solution (e.g. 'Hibitane'; Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd, Millbank, London, S.W.I), and the graft bed is prepared by removing a thin sliver of skin about O.Sin (12 mm) long, and about half the width of the tail (Fig. 1). Care must be taken not to cut too deep, as this will cause excessive bleeding. Slight bleeding will occur, but this does not interfere with the acceptance of the graft. The piece of skin that is removed may be used as a graft on another animal, or the graft may be prepared separately in exactly the same way. Grafts may be held for short periods on sterile filter paper damped with sterile physiological saline.