Short-term chilled storage of zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryos in cryoprotectant as an alternative to cryopreservation.

As zebrafish embryos have never been cryopreserved, we developed a protocol to store zebrafish embryos (50% epiboly-5.3 hour post fertilization) for up to 18 h at 0 degrees C. Initial experiments to optimize the cryoprotectant (CPA) solution demonstrated improved embryo hatching rate following chilling at 0 degrees C for 18 h with 1 M MeOH+0.1 M sucrose (56 +/- 5%) compared with other combinations of methanol (0.2-0.5 M) and sucrose (0.05-0.1 M). This combination of CPAs that protects against chilling injury was further tested to assess its impact on sox gene and protein expression. Significant decreases in sox3 gene expression were observed in hatched embryos that had been chilled for 18 h in 1 M MeOH+0.1 sucrose compared with non-chilled controls, however the expression of both sox2 and sox3 proteins was unaffected. Significant decreases in sox2 protein expression were, however, observed in embryos that had been chilled without CPAs and these embryos also had lower hatching rates than those chilled with the optimal CPA solution. We, therefore, conclude that the CPA combination of 1 M MeOH+0.1 M sucrose facilitates chilled storage of early stage (50% epiboly) zebrafish embryos for up to 18 h without compromising transcriptional response.