Adventures in Liquid Nitrogen

Don't you just love today's blog entry title? It sounds so...mysterious! (Note to Mom and Dad before beginning my tale: don't worry, I didn't freeze my arms off in a liquid nitrogen-related lab accident).

In most biology labs, living cells must be stored under conditions of extreme cold, usually in liquid nitrogen, which maintains a temperature of approximately -320 degrees Fahrenheit (I'm from Duluth, and that's cold even for me!) The cells are stored in small vials, which are placed in boxes that can hold about 100 vails each. Then each box is put into a rack and submerged into a vat of liquid nitrogen (in our case, the Thermolyte Locator 8, shown on the right) where it can be stored until whenever needed. (Embarrassing note: I must admit that sometimes I pretend that I am encasing Han Solo in carbonite as I am dipping my cells into the smoldering liquid nitrogen..."He's alive...and in perfect hibernation!")

Anyways, on Monday I went to retrieve a vial of my cells from the liquid nitrogen, and I was perplexed to find my box missing from the rack! Where had it gone? The answer soon became apparent as I tried moving the racks around and discovered that there was something blocking their movement--I therefore deduced that my box had evidently fallen to the bottom of the liquid nitrogen tank!

The next question was obviously how the hell I was going to retrieve my box from a huge vat of liquid nitrogen. Despite my Duluth-induced resistance to cold, dipping my arm into a substance that causes instaneous frostbite to retrieve my box full of cells did not sound enticing. I made some enquiries with my friend Olivier in the lab and we soon found a long pair of metallic forceps. Unfortunately, the situation went from bad to worse when I accidentally submerged the forceps to far into the liquid nitrogen and it got stuck. Merde! After making a few more calls, we were able to try again with a fabulous device we borrowed from another lab called "The Cryo Claw", a long metallic arm on one end with a gripper on the other (picture on bottom), apparently designed for just such an event. Unfortunately, due to the large volume of liquid nitrogen, we couldn't actually see the box--we could only feel it--and trying to remove it with the vaunted Cryo Claw was like performing an apppendectomy blind. After 2 hours (I'm not kidding--we were seriously working on this issue for 2 hours) we solved the problem by emptying half the tank of liquid nitrogen (during which a large metal bucket was also accidentally dropped in the drink and had to be fished out), after which we were able to visualize the box.

Finally, after some masterful maneuvering with the Cryo Claw, Olivier was able to rescue the box with no loss of sample whatsoever! I was so excited that I insisted that we celebrate with a "high five" (by the way, the "high five" is evidently an American phenomenon--and I could tell that Olivier was pleased to have participated in his first ever genuine high-five).

So that's my adventure in liquid nitrogen. I bought Olivier lunch today to thank him for his mad Cryo Claw manipulating skills. All's well that ends well.

French for the Day? The word for liquid nitrogen is "l'azote liquide".