Originally Posted by grolby

Meh. It's probably stored at -80 degrees. It was no doubt thawed for the first test. It probably gets moved from one -80 freezer to another and then back about once a year due to the need to defrost freezers every so often to keep them working right. Not enough time out of the freezer to thaw. As molecular biologist who needs to use this kind of equipment, I can tell you that we take this pretty seriously - stuff will not get lost. But there isn't a lot of paperwork involved in this kind of routine lab maintenance, either. Things aren't watched at all hours. This might not sound good, but the reality is that there's just not any serious threat of things being misplaced; we're good at keeping track of things. A big deal is made about the supposed sensitivity of biological samples by people who aren't in the field. The reality: it takes some pretty serious negligence to mess up a sample. It doesn't happen too often. My take is that the scientists are that last people I would worry about in this process.