Functional, morphologic, and molecular characterization of cold storage injury

In bypass surgery, vessels are stored ex situ for <2 hours and for vessel banking for up to 48 hours during decontamination before cryopreservation. We investigated the onset of storage-induced alterations. The experiments reveal various genes were altered significantly, even within the first 2 hours of cold storage. This is of major importance, because of the time delay between regulation of messenger RNA and protein level and functional consequences. The alterations described here on the molecular level occur before any alterations on morphologic or functional levels are obvious. These molecular alterations, however, may affect later graft function.