What abnormalities can result from long term cryogenic preservation?

Question

Overlord Larmark is a scientist from the 21st century who is interested in world domination, and needs powerful generals to lead his armies. He looks to the ancient world, as only that time period has the generals with the charisma and strength of will to do what must be done. Using scientific shennigans, he invented a time machine to go back to the past. Unfortunately it is a one way trip, and he must bide his time to make it back to the present.

It is an undisputed fact in the scientific community that traits gained during a person's life are inherited by their offspring. He takes sperm samples from world conquerors ( Julius Ceasar, Temujin, Alexander the Great, etc), and stores them using cryogenics similar to the methods used in the 21st century. When he gets back to the current period, these superbabies will be grown in artificial wombs and raised by Larmark to prepare them for world conquest.

The diabolically master plan worked, and the superbabies have been born. However, storing sperm for thousands of years in this fashion has never been done before, and only someone as intelligent as the overlord could have accomplished it. What abnormalities or problems can possibly result in these children due to this process?

Answer 1

Try time stasis instead, it is already known in the present that cryopreservation is not foolproof even for limited times.

Cryopreservation causes a significant decline in motility, viability, chromatin stability, and membrane integrity and causes significant morphological alterations. This loss in sperm quality is especially significant in patients whose sperm parameters are poor to begin with [Hammadeh et al. 1999; McLaughlin et al. 1992]. Motility is the most affected parameter [Donnelly et al. 2001a; Gandini et al. 2006]. O’Connell et al. [2002] proposed that the decrease in sperm motility is due to mitochondrial damage and physical changes to the sperm tail. Damage to mitochondrial membranes interrupts the process of energy production, leading to decreased ATP availability in the spermatozoa. Cryopreservation may induce an irreversible coiling of the flagellum, hindering the tail’s propelling motion [O'Connell et al. 2002].

Cryopreservation can also induce DNA damage. The packaging of DNA in a sperm nucleus follows a long process that begins in spermiogenesis where the histones are replaced by protamines [Boissonneault 2002]. The integrity of spermatozoa seems to be the determining factor in the success of fertilization in both natural and assisted reproductive methods [Gandini et al. 2006]. It has been noted that the decrease in post-thaw quality is mostly due to DNA fragmentation that occurs after cryopreservation. Such DNA damage may affect embryo quality and viability. Also, it has been noted that different sperm samples exhibit different levels of DNA damage. Such findings indicate the need to assess DNA integrity as a part of the routine infertility workup [Gosalvez et al. 2011].