told Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\nInstead of suspending entire human bodies, like Sigourney Weaver\u2019s Ellen Ripley in the horror sci-fi blockbuster \u201cAlien,\u201d German and his colleagues suggest that their findings could lay the groundwork for protecting the brain following severe injury, preserving donor organs, or even suspending the entire bodies of mammals through cryopreservation.<\/p>\n
The act of freezing is incredibly damaging to organic tissue, as ice crystals can rupture cellular walls. And that\u2019s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg the researchers had to face.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeyond ice, we must account for several considerations, including osmotic stress and toxicity due to cryoprotectants,\u201d German told Nature.<\/p>\n
To avoid forming any ice crystals, the team focused on vitrification for their attempts to restore activity in frozen mouse brains, which traps molecules in a glass-like state by cooling liquids at extremely fast speeds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to see if function could restart after the complete cessation of molecular mobility in the vitreous state,\u201d German explained.<\/p>\n
The team started small, vitrifying 350-micrometer-thick slices of mouse brains for their study. They were dipped in a solution of cryopreservation chemicals and then cooled down to -320 degrees Fahrenheit using liquid nitrogen.<\/p>\n
After spending anywhere between ten minutes and seven days inside a deep freezer, the team thawed the slices. They examined them using microscopy and discovered that neuronal and synaptic membranes had stayed intact despite the ordeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cNotably, hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) was well preserved, indicating that the cellular machinery of learning and memory remains operational,\u201d the paper reads, referring to the persistent strengthening of synapses between neurons that is widely considered the cellular foundation for learning and memory.<\/p>\n
The neurons also responded to electrical stimuli that deviated, but remained largely normal as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese findings extend known biophysical limits for cerebral hypothermic shutdown by demonstrating recovery after complete cessation of molecular mobility in the vitreous state and thus contribute to achieving the objective of structural and functional preservation of neural tissue,\u201d the researchers concluded.<\/p>\n
The team is now excited to try out the technique on human tissues as well as entire organs for long-term preservation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already have preliminary data showing viability in human cortical tissue,\u201d German told Nature.<\/p>\n
But before we can start suspending all biological activity to lie in stasis while awaiting our reawakening in an alien planetary system, plenty of work remains.<\/p>\n
For one, German admitted that we will need \u201cbetter vitrification solutions and cooling and rewarming technologies\u201d before the method can be applied to \u201clarge human organs\u201d \u2014 let alone entire mammals.<\/p>\n
More on cryopreservation: Rich People Who Get Cryogenically Frozen Are Hoarding Their Money for When They Get Thawed Out<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The concept of \u201ccryosleep\u201d \u2014 spending prolonged periods of time in suspended animation in a deep freeze state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,273798,273797,273793,273795,128,273796,273794],"class_list":["post-554040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-deep-freeze","tag-ellen-ripley","tag-ice-crystals","tag-mouse-brains","tag-science","tag-university-of-erlangen","tag-vitrification"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}