Basically, we have unfixed aortas that we want to obtain cryosections from. Aortas and hearts are unfixed, and I was wondering if I can immerse them in OCT at room temperature and then store them at -80C, until needed for cutting. Will that keep the tissue morphology intact?
Yes, you can do that, but it is best to do the embedding as soon as you can after harvesting the tissue, to keep the morphology.
This would be really quite slow so you will get much larger ice crystals forming in the tissue which will cause more damage and result in poor structure preservation at the cellular level. Faster, snap freezing, using isopentane, cooled by liquid nitrogen would be better. Always try to leave the top surface of your block above the isopentane, to allow for the very slight expansion which occurs - particularly with larger specimens - if the block is totally immersed then this expansion often causes the block (and tissue) to crack.
Agree with Steven, using the typical OCT embedding by partially immersing your OCT-filled mould in isopentane that is cooled with liquid N2 is a quite reliable and relatively fast way to embed. We have used this method to prepare for LCM and laso for Cytochrome oxidase in situ activity assays
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