Doesn ice burst cells like water freezing in a bottle?
During freezing, water expands by only 9% in volume, and 3% in length. That is biologically insignificant. Cells are bags, not bottles. More importantly, unless tissue is cooled extremely rapidly, ice doesn’t even form inside cells. Cells are damaged by the opposite effect: they are dehydrated and compressed by the ice that forms around cells. Freezing damages cells, but not by volume expansion. It must also be noted that freezing damage is irrelevant when tissue is preserved by vitrification. Ice does not form during vitrification.
