Hello, I'd like to apologize for my English in advance, I'm still trying to polish it.
We are performing several bone marrow transplantations (BMT) or fetal liver transplantations (FTL) to reconstitute the immune system in lethally-irradiated recipient mice. We're using CD45.1/CD45.2 and RAG-1 deficient mice, both in a BL6 background. We do irradiate them with 8,4 and 11 Gy, respectively, in two irradiation sessions 3 hours apart (4.2+4,2 and 5.5+5.5). We keep them with antibiotic water for at least two months.
Whenever we use the RAG1-deficient (RAG-KO from now on) mice, we observe that around 30-40% of the mice die within the first week (we observe early mortality 48h after performing progenitor injections). We don't have such a problem when we use CD45.1/CD45.2 mice.
RAG-KO mice used to be irradiated with 9Gy before I started my doctoral thesis in my lab, and I needed to decrease the dose in order to avoid more severe consequences (it could reach 80-100% mortality).
I don't know whether an excessive inbreeding or a very high Gy doses could be the main cause of this early mortality. What do you think it might be the problem?
Irradiation preferentially kills rapidly dividing cells, including bone marrow and epithelial cells of the gut and other organs. The most common application of rodent irradiation is to destroy the bone marrow and other hematopoietic progenitors (myeloablation), either for immunosuppression or before replacing the immune system with donor grafts.
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