​EMBRYO TRANSFER LABORATORY

History

Embryo Transfer Laboratory of the Institute was established in 2002 to start embryo studies in the field of Livestock Science, and necessary permissions were obtained from our Ministry for commercial embryo production in 2016. Our laboratory has led many studies in our country since its establishment. For instance, in 2005, the first calf was obtained through using the first in vitro fertilization technique. Moreover, the first calf developed from sex determined embryos were obtained in Turkey by a study in 2010. 

Mission

In our department, superovulation, in vivo and in vitro embryo production techniques, embryo freezing, gender determination in embryo, embryo micromanipulation, and OPU (Ovum Pick-Up) are studied. Also, embryos are frozen by direct transfer, vitrification and slow freezing methods and genders of both in vivo and in vitro embryos are identified.

Our laboratory has a production capacity of 1750 embryos, 750 in vivo, and 1000 in vitro. Embryo transfer and embryo production courses for veterinarians are organized in line with the requests. After the completion of the ongoing infrastructure work at our Directorate, commercial embryo production will be started.

Embryos belonging to domestic cattle, sheep, and goat breeds are frozen and stored in the embryo bank within the scope of a Tubitak Project called "In vitro conservation and pre-molecular identification of some of the domestic animal genetic resources" (Türkhaygen-1).

Vision

Advanced biotechnological applications such as gene regulation and nuclear transfer are increasingly used in animal breeding to meet the food needs of the increasing world population. Other biotechnology methods such as cloning and CRISPR will be adapted to our laboratory to closely follow the studies done in the world and to increase our country's livestock traits. It is also aimed to develop different and innovative techniques to obtain more embryos/oocytes per animal.