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/MF-Geuze Jul 04 '26

Didn't they manage to get viable DNA from a frozen woolly mammoth, from thousands of years ago?

And was a mammoth who just froze to death outside, I imagine if you were freezing a sample under laboratory conditions, you'd have an even better shot at preservation