Many species of oak trees fall on the list of endangered plants. However, their acorns are not usable after freezing, so conservationists are unable to add them to seed banks. As a result, scientists have had to investigate alternative preservation methods for oaks.

A recently published study has demonstrated that, for oaks, an alternative to seed-banking could be shoot tip cryopreservation. Shoot tip cryopreservation is the process of clipping off the shoot tip of a plant — the part that contains cells able to regenerate into a whole new plant — and placing it in droplets of a freezable substance. The plants are then frozen in liquid nitrogen, -320 degrees Fahrenheit, until they're ready to be thawed and grown.

Scientists found that, when they attempted shoot tip cryopreservation on four different species of oaks, some the plants were able to grow after freezing and unfreezing. But some didn't survive. Survival depended on the species. One species survived liquid nitrogen freezing 56 percent of the time, another never did. When looking specifically at the most successful species, the researchers also found that slight temperature differences in the freezing and unfreezing processes can have an effect on both general plant survival and exactly how well the plants recover after freezing.

Up until now, there had been no evidence that shoot tip cryopreservation worked on oaks. While survival does depend on the species of oak, this study demonstrates that this method can be added to the arsenal of the different conservation tools available for oak preservation, and can hopefully contribute to finding methods that work for all oak species.

Mutations in ARS enzymes cause diseases such as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which affects the nerves to a person's arms and legs, because cells cannot make proteins properly. Currently, there are few treatments for ARS defects. However, researchers predict that flooding cells with extra amino acid might allow defective ARS enzymes to function better.

To test this, scientists identified patients with ARS mutations that cause charging defects, and grew their cells in a petri dish. They then treated these cells with different amounts of amino acid, and compared the electrical impedance of the cells that received treatment to those that did not. “Impedance analysis” is an approach where scientists put cells on a surface that can conduct electricity.  As cells grow, they block the electrical current, and the speed at which the current is blocked corresponds to how fast the cells are growing. 

The scientists found cells with ARS mutations that were treated with amino acids grew faster than cells that did not receive treatment. These promising results meant that the researchers could move on to trying this treatment in the patients themselves. They designed specific amino acid treatments for four people with the same ARS mutations they studied in cells, monitored their symptoms over time, and found that giving patients amino acids alleviated many of their most severe symptoms.

While we still don’t know if these results are applicable to all patients with ARS mutations, this study found a potential new way to treat ARS mutations in patients. Considering that ARS mutations can cause very severe disease, this is exciting and promising for both scientists and patients alike.