文档介绍：CHAPTER 1
Overview
Mark R. McLellanand John G. Day
1. Introduction
Nature dictates that biological material will decay and die. The struc-
ture and function anisms will change and be lost with time, as
surely in laboratory cultures as in the biologists who study and manipu-
late them. Attempts to stop the biological clock have been conjured by
minds ancient and modern; at the heart of many such schemes have been
experiments with temperature and water content.
Whereas refrigeration technology provides a means of slowing the rate
of deterioration of perishable goods, the use of much lower temperatures
has proved a means of storing anisms in a state of suspended
animation for extended periods. The removal of water from viable biolog-
ical material in the frozen state (freeze-drying) provides another means
of arresting the biological clock by withholding water, mencing
again by its addition.
Over 40 years have passedsince the first demonstration of the effective
cryopreservation of spermatozoa was made (I). The potential of storing
live cells for extended, even indefinite, periods quickly caught the imagi-
nation of biologists and medics working in diverse fields, and experi-
ments to cryopreserve many thousands anelle, cell, tissue, organ,
and body types have been, and continue to be, performed. Key mile-
stones have been the essful cryopreservation of bull spermatozoa
(2); the first essfully frozen and thawed erythrocytes (3); the first
live birth of calves after insemination using frozen spermatozoa (4); suc-
cessful cryopreservation of plant cell cultures (5); cryopreservation of a
From: Methods in Molecular Biology, Vo/. 38: Cryopreservatlon and Freeze-Drymg Protocols
Edited by: J. G. Day and M R McLellan Copyright Q 1995 Humana Press Inc., Totowa, NJ
2 McLellan and Day
plant callus (6); the essful recovery of frozen mouse embryos (7,8);
and the use of cryopreservation to store embryos for use in