eli5 Why can human embryo’s be frozen but not human adult?
In: Biology
Anything can be frozen, it’s the unfreezing that becomes the problem. In my lab, I would freeze cells all the time as a kind of record of progress. You add special buffers to prevent ice crystals from tearing the cells apart and then cool them down to eventually -80 C, and then you can cryogenic freeze them in liquid nitrogen. You slowly “unfreeze” them in crushed ice / water slurry which is just at about 0.2 C. You can’t do that with organs or I should say we haven’t figured out how just yet. We do transport chilled organs, but they aren’t frozen. If we could do that organ donations would much, much less of a logistics and timing issue.
I have seen goldfish that where left outside for some reason and freeze solid in the ice. The next day was very warm and the ice melted and the fish started swimming again for a while… yet eventually died, so it is possible. No clue how it happened at the cellular level.
edit: words
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