The preservation of marine biological resources in a functional state at any time of the year would represent a real revolution for marine R&D by significantly reducing the costs of both collection and maintenance of organisms in captivity, as well as problems associated with the seasonality of resources. Although cryobiology began to be applied to the marine environment in the mid-1970s, currently there are no more than a dozen laboratories in the world dedicated, in most cases part-time or as a secondary activity, to this scientific discipline, in which there are very few protocols that are successful in cryopreserving fish, mollusc or microalgae cells. The Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo, aware of this strategic opportunity, has been working for years to confirm itself as an international reference in this field, focusing on the development of methodologies that contribute to improving the functioning of the large existing marine biobanks with which the center is collaborating. “The development of technologies that allow for the simpler and less costly conservation of these biological resources is a priority for anyone who wants to carry out marine biological research,” explains researcher Estefanía Paredes, who joined the Vigo center a few months ago after her postdoctoral experience in the laboratory of Peter Mazur, the great world reference in cryobiology.
The main mission of the Marine Biological Resources Functional Preservation Service, located in the facilities that the Center has on Toralla Island, is to develop methodologies, which once properly tested will be made available to the marine research community for their use and preservation of biological material. “We hope that the first protocols will be available from the fourth quarter of this year,” says Paredes, who recalls that the storage of biological material in a stable manner also allows the conservation of genetic lines of special interest, “both in aquaculture and in research, allowing crosses between geographically distant populations or from different years or spawning seasons, which brings great flexibility to marine R&D.”
An infrared laser for ultrafast thawing applied to marine cell types
The recent acquisition, thanks to the funding obtained in the 2015 Mineco scientific infrastructure call, of an infrared laser for ultra-rapid thawing, designed in Peter Mazur’s laboratory at the University of Tennessee, will represent a qualitative leap in the Center’s activity, a world-class innovation. “The method allows freezing speeds of 69,000ºC/min (vitrification) and thawing rates of 10 million degrees per minute to be achieved. With this technology, which the Center will use for the first time in the world for marine cell types, it has been possible to increase post-cryopreservation survival in mouse cells to rates of almost 100% and it has been tested with good experimental results in other non-marine model organisms,” details Estefanía Paredes, who has worked with this procedure in the US for the last five years.
Along with this laser, the only one in Europe and one of two in the world, the Marine Research Center of the University of Vigo has also acquired a state-of-the-art programmable biofreezer that will allow for increased cryopreservation capacity and work with several different species and volumes at the same time. “Biological freezers have the ability to be programmed down to the last detail and allow us to design very specialized cryopreservation protocols,” explains the researcher.
A center involved in two international projects
The commitment of the Marine Research Center to advance knowledge of the functional preservation of marine biological resources is reflected, on the one hand, in its role as leader of the European project for the implementation of the Biobank of the European Center for Marine Biological Resources, funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area program with nearly two million euros and in which, together with the Vigo center, the main marine culture collections located in Norway, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Portugal participate, as well as four marine biotechnology clusters, six companies active in the field of marine biotechnology and the competent administrations in Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom in matters of access to genetic resources.
On the other hand, the Center leads the Cryomar subproject, included as a Joint Research Activity (JRA) in the European project H2020: Assemble+, in which cryopreservation protocols for different marine organisms will be developed using cutting-edge techniques and methodologies. The project has a funding of 10 million euros and 24 European institutions participate in it.
Source: duvi
