E-Book Overview
This book provides detailed protocols for all the latest methodologies used to assure the long-term biostorage of a diverse range of biological materials. Developed in expert laboratories, the protocols have been painstakingly perfected over the years to provide time-tested, step-by-step instructions that ensure robust and reproducible results. Each protocol deals with the preservation of an organelle, cell, or tissue type, and is accessible even to the nonspecialist because of its cookbook approach. Novel protocols can be readily developed with the help of the "hands-on" Notes sections. Cryopreservation and Freeze-Drying Protocols is an indispensable reference work for both the individual researcher, and all those who want to establish or improve biostorage systems in their laboratories. Its applications range from microbial culture collections, botanic gardens, and zoos to animal husbandry, aquaculture, medicine, human fertilization, and cell and molecular biology.
E-Book Content
CHAPTER1
Overview Mark
R. McLellanand
John G. Day
1. Introduction Nature dictates that biological material will decay and die. The structure and function of organisms will change and be lost with time, as surely in laboratory cultures as in the biologists who study and manipulate 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 living organisms in a state of suspended animation for extended periods. The removal of water from viable biological material in the frozen state (freeze-drying) provides another means of arresting the biological clock by withholding w