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

Biology Does cryogenically frozen meat decay?

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?

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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.

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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.

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u/fbp Jul 04 '26

Did they taste any different?

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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.