Isolation and characteristics of primordial germ cells in chicken

Optimized conditions for isolation of primordial germ cells in chicken and their description are given. Trypsinization (with 0.05 % trypsin) was found to be the most effective method of disaggregation in chick embryos for isolation of their embryonic cells. The maximum number of primordial germs cells can be isolated from 6 days-old embryos, followed by separation of the resulting cell suspension by adhesion after 90 minutes of their cultivation with the use of chicken embryonic fibroblasts as feeder layer. During incubation of primordial germ cells on feeder layer cells remained viable for a longer time, and ranged from 5 to 7 days, depending on the type of cells used as feeder layer (finite cell line STO, recently separated and incubated for several passages in chicken embryo fibroblasts).