A new technique has recently been developed at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) for the cryopreservation of mouse sperm. The technique is much improved and applicable to strains that are commonly used in gene targeting and transgenesis. A JAX field team came to my laboratory at The Rockefeller University in January 2007, and froze sperm samples of 129 of our published and unpublished strains, using the new ‘sperm cryo’ technique. Through this initiative, today 77 of our published strains are publicly available through JAX, and the remaining strains will become publicly available one by one, after publication. This personal communication describes various aspects of the sperm cryo initiative in my laboratory: history, how to locate a strain online, levels of strain availability, advantages of a third-party distribution scheme, cryorecovery fee, caveats, timing of availability for strains that are not yet published, outlook, credits, and contact information at JAX. This initiative was motivated by the growing complexity of our mouse colony and the numerous requests for our strains. It is also related to the upcoming closing of my laboratory at The Rockefeller University, and its relocation to the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany.

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