Not all is lost: resilience of microbiome samples to freezer failures and long-term storage

Microbiome studies heavily rely on ultracold freezers for sample storage. Unfortunately, these freezers are prone to frequent malfunctions, resulting in the loss of invaluable samples at laboratories worldwide. Such losses can halt research progress due to potential issues with sample reliability. Our research demonstrates that not all is lost when an unforeseen freezer failure occurs. Samples can still be reliably used to assess treatment effects, which is particularly important for long-term temporal studies where samples cannot be readily obtained again.