Thanks to modern science, organ transplants are safer and easier than they ever were. Not long ago, something like a heart transplant would have been considered practically unthinkable. Unfortunately, there are still many limitations. In many cases, especially in the case of heart transplants, the operation must be performed within a few hours or the organ won’t be usable anymore, since freezing it would damage it to the point of uselessness. So researchers have been tirelessly searching for a way to freeze human organs without dehydrating them (frostbite leads to cell death for this very reason).

While there is still much to learn, especially when it comes to how we can apply it to humans, there may be hope yet for us to fix this problem. It turns out that wood frogs have a natural system that allows them to put their bodies in a state of suspended animation whenever it gets cold. The wood frogs have a nucleating protein, one not present in human blood, which regulates their superpowers. Basically, while our cells lose water and then fall apart when they freeze, the frogs’ cells first freeze the water portion in their blood so it doesn’t leave the body, and then start producing sugar so that there will be something in place of the water in the cells to keep them together. If we can figure out a way to harness these proteins for use in human blood, we could theoretically keep organs frozen indefinitely, revolutionizing organ transplants and saving countless lives.