Gnotobiotic Animal Core of the Center for Gastrointestinal Biology and Disease

• What mouse strain do you need?
• How many mice do you need, what sex should they be, and how old should they be?
• How many isolators will you need?
• Will your mice be microbially colonized, and will the organisms be aerobic, anaerobic, or mixed?
• Does your project require that the mice receive periodic treatments or manipulations (special diet, gavage, stool collection, etc.)?
• If your mice are getting treatments, how is this being done (gavage, in drinking water, etc..), what is the concentration and dose, and how often does it need to happen?
  • If gavage is used we either gavage at volumes of 50 uL or 100 uL for each mouse, and gavage should optimally only happen once per day at most to prevent risk of contamination.
  • If in drinking water we will need to know both the concentration of the treatment (mg/mL) and how often the water may need to be changed out.
  • Please keep in mind for any treatment it will need to be sterilized somehow to prevent contamination of the mice (even if the mice are already gnotobiotic).
• Do you need the mice when the experiment is finished, either for necropsy or some other reason?
  • You can either pick up the mice for transport yourself – please note that transportation of live mice may require certain approvals from your own institution.
  • We provide transportation of the mice, but there will be an additional fee.
• Is there any flexibility in any of the above questions?

• What is the availability of the mouse strain needed for your project?
• What is the availability of the isolator space?
  • This is dependent on the number of isolators, and the length of time needed to complete your project.
• Do any included treatments or compounds need to be added to our IACUC protocol?
  • This can take an extra 2-3 weeks, conservatively, to get everything approved, and you will need to provide the following information on your treatment for the IACUC amendment.
    • Route of administration, concentration, and dose of treatment
    • If it is a chemical and has an SDS form that should be provided
    • Any toxicity information for either mice or humans
• How long, in either days or weeks, should your experiment take?
  • It is recommended that experiment timelines be minimized as much as possible because contamination is more likely the longer and experiment goes on.
• Is the timeline realistic for the things that you have to provide?
  • You must be able to get us the treatments or any other supplies that you are providing for your experiment by the start date of the experiment, or you will be charged a cancellation fee.

• Please refer to our price list on the product and services page when preparing your budget. New rates will be coming soon.
• Cancellation fees can be accrued if you are not ready to provide us with the necessary items when the project is scheduled to start. Please make sure you are ready with everything before planning.

Each study, or selective colonization, will need to be house in separate isolators since the transfer of microbes can occur between cages within an isolator. Our large isolators can house up to 12 cages of mice, and our small isolators can house up to 3 cages of mice. It is possible to house several different mouse strains in the same isolator as long as they are colonized with the same microbes.

We are not a commercial breeder and do not have large numbers of gnotobiotic mice of the same age and sex at any given time. It may be pertinent to be somewhat flexible on age and sex to ensure proper numbers for your experiment. If you are not flexible or want a large number of mice, it can be done with careful planning, months of lead time, and extra fees.

The reality of gnotobiotic experiments is that they are difficult in isolators with bulky gloves that limit dexterity, higher chances of contamination, and that are expensive to maintain. Therefore, we recommend the use of no more than 3 concurrent isolators, low numbers of mice for the study, and relatively simple manipulations that only require a breach of the isolator at most once daily.