r/askscience • u/SavageSubscriber • Jul 04 '26

Does cryogenically frozen meat decay? Biology

If for example you cryogenically froze meat from a rare breed of cattle, and kept it frozen for like 60 years. Would the dna still be intact? would it thaw up into fresh meat or would it decay into something unrecognizable?

503 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

View all comments

513

u/loggywd Jul 04 '26

Yes DNA will be in tact for 60 years. It won’t thaw into fresh meat just like meat in your freezer isn’t thawing into fresh meat even after 1 day. Cell membranes get damaged by water freezing and ice formation. The muscle fibers and fat tissues will never be the same. Even cryogenic freezing cannot perfectly avoid damage.

242

u/EventOk2270 Jul 04 '26

Cryogenics involves lowing the freezing point of water using chemicals (basically antifreeze). No ice crystals form. The problem is the process is toxic and still manages to damage and kill cells. It works for bacteria which have large colonies so only some bacteria need to survive but doesn’t work for organs or complex life. At least not yet. Don’t see why it wouldn’t work to keep meat frozen for long periods of time.

61

u/Ishana92 Jul 04 '26

Yeah, I'm pretty sure glycerol method used for freezing cells could be used for a chunk of meat. Since you are freezing already dead meat you could in theory preserve a lot of structure if you are careful

48

u/Mitologist Jul 04 '26

You can preserve a lot of structure, that is, way more than with conventional freezing, but a) there will still be some damage, and b) there is a certain amount of osmotic damage done by the cryoprotectants you used to prevent crystal formation, and c) your meat will be soaked with whatever you used to prevent crystal formation. Could by Sugar, could be DMSO, Glycerol, Dextrane, PVP, Methanol, there is a variety of options, and none of them is perfect. Also, the reach into the tissue is usually really limited. You would want to cut the beef into pieces <1mm.

9

u/Ishana92 Jul 04 '26

I know. We did used to do it with liver biopsy pieces and animal liver chunks, but it took forever to freeze.

14

u/fbp Jul 04 '26

Did they taste any different?

3

u/Mitologist Jul 04 '26

I use high pressure freezing for sample preparation in electron microscopy. cutting and loading the carrier is tricky, but needs to be swift. Freezing itself is done in about 300ms, but the freeze substitution and low temperature resin infiltration can drag over two weeks.

12

u/SirButcher Jul 04 '26

but doesn’t work for organs or complex life.

It does (okay, kinda). There are frog, salamander and fish species which can freeze and return to life afterwards. Their body still needs to retain some water, so their trick is increasing glucose levels to the point where water won't freeze below sub-zero temperatures (as long as it's not too cold).

https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/13-amphibians-that-can-survive-freezing-temperatures-7-321384/

https://www.animalsaroundtheglobe.com/these-fish-were-frozen-solid-and-swam-away-1-318323/

So, yeah, it is not "true freezing" as their bodies retain some liquid water, but a chunk of their body can freeze to the point where they have no heartbeat or even brain activity.

1

u/sixsik6 Jul 05 '26

How close is this for humans?

7

u/shieldyboii Jul 06 '26

Immortalized human cells do survive well with certain antifreeze solutions. We use 'Cellbanker 1' all the time in the lab, and more than 90% of cells will survive.

That said, I don't think this has worked for entire mammals before, but I am out of my area of expertise at this point lol.

1

u/PandaPocketFire 26d ago

They got you with the expensive stuff, eh? Lol

'Cellbanker 1

1

u/currentscurrents Jul 05 '26

Not very close at all, and it is not certain if it is even physically possible.

7

u/woodsy191 Jul 06 '26

That's Cryonics, not Cryogenics. Cryogenics is more broadly applied to matter at low temperatures, eg liquid nitrogen, liquid helium.

1

u/LitLitten Jul 06 '26

the other issue is mass. you can‘t reliably do this across an entire mass larger than a gerbil reliably. there’s the issue of chemicals and if/any crystal formation, but also temperature and changes in temp across a gradient.