Parabiosis in Mice: A Detailed Protocol

Paniz Kamran; Konstantina-Ioanna Sereti; Peng Zhao; Shah R. Ali; Irving L. Weissman; Reza Ardehali

doi:10.3791/50556

JoVE Journal
Medicine

A subscription to JoVE is required to view this content. Sign in or start your free trial.

JoVE Journal Medicine

Parabiosis in Mice: A Detailed Protocol

Full Text

77,137 Views

07:56 min

October 6, 2013

DOI: 10.3791/50556-v

Paniz Kamran^1,2, Konstantina-Ioanna Sereti^1,2, Peng Zhao^1,2, Shah R. Ali³, Irving L. Weissman³, Reza Ardehali^1,2

¹Department of Medicine-Division of Cardiology,University of California, Los Angeles, ²Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research,University of California, Los Angeles, ³Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine,Stanford University School of Medicine

Parabiotic joining of two organisms leads to the development of a shared circulatory system. In this protocol, we describe the surgical steps to form a parabiotic connection between a wild-type mouse and a constitutive GFP-expressing mouse.

The overall goal of this procedure is to perform para biotic joining of two mice to study a shared circulatory system. This is accomplished by first performing an incision to the adjacent sides of the animals. After the fascia are separated, the two mice are firmly connected at the elbow and knee joints.

The final step is to connect the skin of the two animals by a continuous suture. Ultimately, flow cytometric analysis can show blood chimerism within 10 to 14 days after the procedure. The main advantage of this technique over existing method, like bone marrow transplantation or cell injection, is that it does not require immunosuppression and also allows the maintenance of CX circulation for a long period of time.

View the full transcript and gain access to thousands of scientific videos