Cryopreservation of sea urchin sperm and early life stages.

Abstract

Sea urchins are excellent model organisms useful for several lines of biotechnological research. Sea urchins are typically collected from the sea and kept in research facilities all over the world for such purposes. Cryopreservation can be a very powerful tool to enhance the use of sea urchins as a model species for research. The development of cryopreservation protocols for different sea urchin gametes, embryos, and larvae allows year round access to high quality material outside the natural reproductive season. It also reduces the uncertainty and variability that may be caused by changing oceanic, meteorological, and environmental conditions. Access to cryopreserved gametes and embryos will allow using these model organisms in laboratories all around the world, regardless of their facilities or their proximity to a natural population of sea urchins. Cryopreservation is a very useful tool for aquaculture production, fisheries conservation, and wild stock enhancement allowing spat supply all year round without the need of conditioning broodstock for out of season reproduction-which is expensive, time consuming, and often unfruitful. It will also provide flexibility for selective breeding programs by allowing crossings of individuals with different reproductive seasons. Although cryopreservation protocols have been successfully developed for many valuable fisheries species such as sturgeons, salmonid fishes, and other marine invertebrates (e.g., oysters), only a small amount of research has been carried out regarding sea urchin cryopreservation. In this chapter, we outline protocols for the cryopreservation of sea urchin cells.