I am looking to treat thyroid tissue with Iodine-131 and need to hold the tissue in a 'contaminated tissue' freezer, although the freezer is -20C as opposed to -80C. I usually store all tissue at -80C, but in this case it's not possible. Will the difference in temperature have a deleterious effect on the tissue?
Thanks in advance
Andy
It depends on what you are planning to do with your samples. Generally spoken, for most RNA species, -20° is detrimental (RNAse are highly active). DNA or proteins (may be differentially affected) can be usually stored for weeks to months at -20°. However, if you intend to investigate tertiary structure-dependent functions, such as kinase activity of proteins, storage temperature is more important compared to the use of denatured protein lysates for Western blotting. If you intend to look at phosphorylation patterns in denatured protein lysates, storage temperature is again of importance. Most of these pieces of informations are covered in the data sheets of the diagnostic tools you want to use.
Off course the different in temperature have a deleterious effect on biopsy tissue, however antioxidant analysis in surgical tissue can be store till 7 days at -20°C.If you want to to protein marker studies then I would suggest store the tissue at -80°C.Further your concern is related with with I-131 treatment then you can use even -20°C for the short duration. Furthermore -20°C must have good shielding since I-131 is a radioactive material.
If you take its thermodynamics properties of biological tissues, it is definitely going to drastically change while moving towards the lower temperature. I suggest you to take into consider the biological reactions which can cause deleterious effects to decide the temperature for sample preservation.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Anatomy
- Tissue