Cryo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cryo- is from the Ancient Greek κρύος (krúos, “ice, icy cold, chill, frost”). Uses of the prefix Cryo- include:

Physics and geology[edit]

  • Cryogenics, the study of the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures and the study of producing extremely low temperatures
  • Cryoelectronics, the study of superconductivity under cryogenic conditions and its applications
  • Cryosphere, those portions of Earth's surface where water ice naturally occurs
  • Cryotron, a switch that uses superconductivity
  • Cryovolcano, a theoretical type of volcano that erupts volatiles instead of molten rock

Biology and medicine[edit]

  • Cryobiology, the branch of biology that studies the effects of low temperatures on living things
  • Cryonics, the low-temperature preservation of people who cannot be sustained by contemporary medicine
  • Cryoprecipitate, a blood-derived protein product used to treat some bleeding disorders
  • Cryotherapy, medical treatment using cold
  • Cryo-electron microscopy (cryoEM), a technique that fires beams of electrons at proteins that have been frozen in solution, to deduce the biomolecules’ structure

Other uses[edit]

See also[edit]

External links[edit]

The dictionary definition of cryo- at Wiktionary