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OT - to answer a question I missed from yesterday's cryopreservation blog

tonieye11's picture

Submitted by tonieye11 on Sat, 11/19/2016 - 9:10am

No I meant human cells. You can in fact freeze many types of human cells, like immune cells, and they retain their activity.

I freeze healthy and diseased human cells often and the defrost them for later work.

It is tissue that cannot be frozen and thawed in a functional way. A very important distinction. If you freeze a muscle there is no known way to defrost it and still have functional muscle, for example.

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tonieye11's picture

Submitted by tonieye11 on Sat, 11/19/2016 - 11:01am

I'm not a lab tech, actually I'm an immunologist. The immune cells reference is as always skewed to to my audience so leukocytes, white blood cells, etc seemed too technical for an audience that only thought bacteria could be frozen and thawed.

Leukocytes are not the only cells that are routinely frozen and preserved.

And you're right, complex systems don't fit this narrative hence my use of tissues as an example.