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The ultimate objective is to freeze the specimen so rapidly (at 10 4 to 10 6 K per second) that ice crystals are unable to form, or are prevented from growing big enough to cause damage to the specimen's ultrastructure. The formation of samples containing specimens in amorphous ice is the "holy grail" of biological cryomicroscopy. [citation needed]
Controlled-rate and slow freezing, also known as slow programmable freezing (SPF), [18] is a technique where cells are cooled to around -196 °C over the course of several hours. Slow programmable freezing was developed during the early 1970s, and eventually resulted in the first human frozen embryo birth in 1984. Since then, machines that ...
At least six major areas of cryobiology can be identified: 1) study of cold-adaptation of microorganisms, plants (cold hardiness), and animals, both invertebrates and vertebrates (including hibernation), 2) cryopreservation of cells, tissues, gametes, and embryos of animal and human origin for (medical) purposes of long-term storage by cooling to temperatures below the freezing point of water.
A cryoprotectant is a substance used to protect biological tissue from freezing damage (i.e. that due to ice formation). Arctic and Antarctic insects, fish and amphibians create cryoprotectants (antifreeze compounds and antifreeze proteins) in their bodies to minimize freezing damage during cold winter periods. Cryoprotectants are also used to ...
By freezing at an ultra-fast rate and using osmotic dehydration, the water that is still present in the cell is unable to form crystals and will be part of a glass-like or vitrified solution. [10] This method can be further split in different variants e.g. droplet vitrification, encapsulation dehydration and plate vitrification.
An aqueous sample solution is applied to a grid-mesh and plunge-frozen in liquid ethane or a mixture of liquid ethane and propane. [1] While development of the technique began in the 1970s, recent advances in detector technology and software algorithms have allowed for the determination of biomolecular structures at near-atomic resolution. [ 2 ]
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In 2014, a Cochrane systematic review was published. It compared vitrification (the newest technology) versus slow freezing (the oldest one). Key results of that review showed that the clinical pregnancy rate was almost 4 times higher in the oocyte vitrification group than in the slow-freezing group, with moderate quality of evidence. [17]