Freezing plants and plant tissues
MBT1159@ACS.TAMU.EDU
Wed, 21 Sep 1994 13:41:03 -0500 (CDT)
I was reading a catalog for an organic chemical distribution company
that happened to have several procedures in it. One of those procedures
was freezing cells for long term storage. It said that you put the
culture (in some sort of media) in a controlled temperature chamber and
decrease the temperature by 1 degree Centigrade per minute for 4 hours.
This will get it to the approximate temperature of liquid nitrogen. For
long term storage, you are supposed to keep it at the vapor phase of
liquid nitrogen. Now it said that you want the concentration of cells
to be 2,000,000-5,000,000 cells per milliliter, and I don't know if
there is something special in the media. If anyone knows what a ampoule
is, it would probably be helpful. Anyway, I'm wondering if it might be
possible to freeze and entire plant in this manner. Take the plant,
roots, leaves, everything...clean it off and sterilize it with
penicillin and chitinase and suspend it in a solution...then freeze it.
I realize no one has tried this, but has anyone done anything with
freezing cells for long periods of time (ex. years). I'll post this
entire freezing and thawing process if y'all would like to see it.
Thanks in advance.
Matt Thompson
Texas A&M University