The BioSqueezer is used to quickly freeze 10-100 mg of soft animal and human tissue. Fresh tissue is compressed into a thin disc about the size of a small coin under the pressure of a stainless steel clamp head that has been pre-cooled in liquid nitrogen or dry ice. Freezing occurs in a few milliseconds, thus giving a snapshot of metabolic events in the cells. The hard frozen disc is easily fragmented or ground without thawing for subsequent extraction of labile nucleic acids, proteins and intracellular metabolite products.