Dear David,
It is posssible to culture Ciona intestinalis in laboratory, to be sure.
This possibility was already described also by NJ Berrill in 1947.
About Halothincya roretzi, it is possible to maintain them in laboratory
for a long time as the others said.
(cf., a few years is required for H. roretzi to mature...)
We have done continious breeding of Ciona intestinalis
using a closed system over about a year (Kano et al, 2001).
The stuffs of the Stazione Zoologica in Naples (SZN) also got mature animals
(Sordino et al., 2000, reviwed by Sordino et al., 2001).
Acutually,
I have gotten some mature Ciona animals using the culture facility of SZN,
although the system should be improved still.
Our system can get mature animals within 10-12 weeks.
The most essential factor is food.
Especially, blue-green algae is effective for them
according to the members of the Cell Biol Lab, SZN.
Dr. W. Smith's lab. does not feed Ciona savignyi,
instead of this, they use raw sea water for culutre animals, which must
include some planktons.
(Moody et al., 1999)
Continious lighting itself did not prevent to mature Ciona animals in my
experience.
An artificial seawater was not good for metamorphoresis in my experience.
The other artificial seawater may be good,
but it is a little bit expensive...
Much seawater is required to culture animals.
This fact limit facility to culture them into institutions near by sea.
(Kano et al., 1999, in Japanese)
Recently, I have heard that some guys are almost overcoming this issue
using closed system.
So, I expect to become the easier to culture Ciona animals in also inland
laboratory in near future.
Anyway, some issue should be overcome, for examples,
temperature, density of colony, amount of food etc.
I really hope that somebody would investigate themselves as a main theme....
Best regards,
Shungo KANO
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