The freezer meltdown was a huge disaster for Judy Muller-Cohn. One night in 1997, she lost millions of dollars’ worth of crucial DNA and protein samples. But this major meltdown at Mycogen Corporation, an agriculture and biotechnology company based in San Diego, ultimately had a happy ending for Muller-Cohn.

“My husband and I knew that sample management was a major issue,” says Muller-Cohn. Her husband, Rolf Muller, had also been complaining about the issue in his lab at Digital Gene Technologies, a genomics and pharmaceutical research company that was generating thousands of samples each week and spending millions of dollars to store and organize them.

Research institutions often have warehouses full of large, expensive freezers that, at temperatures as low as minus 80 degrees Celsius, use lots of energy and are expensive to maintain. Plus there’s the problem of freezer malfunctions, which can happen up to twice a year in a lab, Muller-Cohn estimates. She and her husband reasoned that there had to be a better way.

While on a skiing vacation, the couple were discussing the recent lab disaster when it struck them—the solution to sample storage already existed in nature. Certain invertebrates such as brine shrimp have developed a natural biological mechanism that allows them to survive for over a decade at room temperature. The mechanism is called “anhydrobiosis” or “life without water.” While in this dried-out state, DNA, RNA, proteins, membranes, and cellular systems are protected and can be revived at any time simply by rehydrating.

“We knew this biology existed,” says Muller-Cohn. “We wanted to see if we could mimic the chemistry in a way that might be amenable to lab research. We went back to the bench together, worked night and day to see if we could develop something novel to use in the lab.”

In their spare time, the couple operated out of a friend’s lab at a nearby institution that Muller-Cohn declined to name, and developed special chemical matrices for stabilizing DNA. Muller-Cohn had left Mycogen, so she worked in the day, while her husband worked at night. They even shared a lab notebook that they passed back and forth each day.

After working on this technology for several years, the husband and wife team officially launched their company Biomatrica in 2004. They had created a synthetic polymer called SampleMatrix, which—when mixed with DNA, RNA, and proteins—could preserve these samples at room temperature using the principles of anhydrobiosis. SampleMatrix forms a protective coating around a sample to prevent it from degrading, essentially “shrink-wrapping” the extracted DNA or RNA. Samples are air-dried at laboratory room temperature prior to storage; they can be recovered by rehydration and used immediately without purifying. “You just add water and the sample comes back to life.”

Muller-Cohn declines to comment in more detail about the chemistry of her products, but says they have found no signs of degradation so far, and she estimates that this system is 20 times less costly than freezing. This technology is useful for scientists who need to extract and store DNA and RNA from cell culture and lines for genomic or cloning experiments, she says. The company’s newest product is DNAgard, developed for stabilizing DNA in tissues and cells in liquid at room temperature.

“I have heard good things about the products,” says Jay Skeen, vice president of San Diego–based Magellan BioSciences, who has no ties to Biomatrica. “Scientists have been able to successfully retrieve samples, and the product does not appear to be hazardous for the user or the samples.”

So far Biomatrica has helped about 1,000 research institutions and companies, including Johnson & Johnson, the US Navy, the National Institutes of Health, Quest Diagnostics, NASA, and the Salk Institute. “We get calls from people who have problems with their energy bill, organizing their samples, and even those who want to store and ship materials from extreme environments like the middle of a desert,” says Muller-Cohn.

Here is an article inspired by Colaco et al. (1992) on the room temperature preservation of DNA and proteins by drying in a trehalose solution:

The 15% solution for preservation
Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 9, Issue 6, June 1994, Page 230
Derek J. Taylor, Terrie L. Finston, Paul D. N. Hebert

Biotechnology (N Y). 1992 Sep;10(9):1007-11.

Extraordinary stability of enzymes dried in trehalose: simplified molecular biology.
Cola￧o C, Sen S, Thangavelu M, Pinder S, Roser B.

Quadrant Research Foundation, Trumpington, Cambridge, England.

We show that extremely fragile biomolecules such as DNA restriction and modifying enzymes can be dried in vitro in the presence of trehalose with no loss of activity, even after prolonged storage. A remarkable and unexpected property of the dried enzyme preparations is their ability to withstand prolonged exposure to temperatures as high as +70 degrees C. This stability is unique to trehalose and is not found with other sugars irrespective of their physical or chemical properties. The immediate significance of these observations is the ability to convert enzymes used in molecular biology into stable reagents. The indefinite stability and high temperature tolerance of these dried enzymes should permit the design of convenient formats that may be of particular significance in the automation of genome mapping and sequencing projects. The stabilization of a wide range of biomolecules by trehalose also has practical implications for a number of areas ranging from basic science, through healthcare and agriculture, to bio-electronics.

"Twenty times less costly"?! You mean one-twentieth the cost, right?

If the editors of The Scientist keep letting this mathematical nonsense slip by, then I'll have to keep reminding them of it.

I would like to draw your attention on a somehow similar story illustrating how an idea about room temperature DNA preservation ended up with the creation of a biotech company.

At the end of 1996, one of my former student, Sophie Tuffet, asked me how it could be possible to store DNA at room temperature. Indeed some people (not scientists, themselves) wanted to have their own DNA extracted and stored in their home so they would be able to give those samples to their descendants. Since -80ﾰC freezers were not standard living room furniture, room temperature storage was the only practical solution. Her intuition was that this should be possible since it was knwon that in some cases, DNA dna could be extracted from bones kept during thousands years in temperate climates. Knowing the main ways of DNA degradation, it became obvious to us that DNA protected from water and oxygen should have a very long life time.

A biotech company (IMAGENE) was created and a procedure was developed whereby DNA samples are actually completely protected from degradation factors by an anhydrous and anoxic atmosphere kept inside metallic (inox) capsules made air- and watertight by laser sealing.

Then more than ten years were devoted to validate the procedure and evaluate the life time of DNA in these storage conditions. The results of these studies (published in the Nucleic Acids Research issue of December 2009) indicate that stored in these conditions, a DNA molecule would undergo only 1-40 cuts per 100,000 nucleotides per century.

One of the most painful lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina was to archive valuable samples in a way that did not require refrigeration. I lost 20 years of work when the contents of my two freezers mildewed for months after our building lost power. Another lesson learned was to create an unrefrigerated "doggy bag" of vital samples to grab at a moments notice when an evacuation is ordered so that work can be continued at another location. Currently, my samples are lyophilized, which requires a bit of finesse and specialized equipment. Any technology that acheives the same end is most welcome!