Abstract
The sea urchin has long been used as an invertebrate model organism in developmental biology, membrane transport and sperm oocyte interactions, and for the assessment of marine pollution. This review explores the effects of cryopreservation and biobanking in the biology and development of sea urchins, all the way from germaplasm through to juveniles. This review will provide an integral view of the process and all that is known so far about the biology of cryopreserved sea urchins, as well as provide an insight on the applications of the biobanking of these model organisms.
Highlights
Sea urchins can be found from shallow shores to deep waters
Sea urchins are well-known as models for studying larvae biology and development; they have been used as a model organism to study reproduction and early cell differentiation processes, sperm oocyte interactions, and efflux transport and apoptosis [3,4,5,6]
Current strategies of water quality assessment integrate the chemical analysis with biological parameters to evaluate the effects of pollution on living resources [7,8] Due to the sensitivity of gametes and early stages of development to pollutants present in seawater—even at very low concentrations—sea urchin sperm and embryo-larval bioassays have been routinely used for water quality assessment for decades [7,9,10]
Summary
Sea urchins can be found from shallow shores to deep waters. There are more than 700 known species widespread within the five oceans [1]. Water below its freezing point is defined as supercooled and has a higher vapor pressure at a given temperature than the ice outside the cell [41,45]. As long as this difference in potential remains, water will slowly leave the cell and freeze externally, and the cell will dehydrate. Banking in liquid nitrogen ( ́196 ̋C) will ensure the conservation of cryopreserved cells as long as necessary [46,47]. At this low temperature, no chemical reactions take place and cellular metabolism is on hold. The fundamental steps in the cryopreservation process are: 1. Selection of the right CPA: It is necessary to know or study the toxic effects and toxicity thresholds of the different chemical compounds in order to select the right CPA or combinations of CPAs to be used in cryopreservation, as well as the temperature of addition and equilibration
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