When bacteria remain frozen, their metabolic activity go down. Normally, with low metabolic activity, one would expect a lot of damage to the DNA and minimal repair, so much so that it would be impossible to regenerate the bacteria. However, scientists have done just that; they have revived bacteria frozen for millions of years, which implies that even frozen, bacteria can repair their DNA. This has far reaching impacts which means that bacteria, if present in other planets, can survive harsh situations for a long time.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/070827-frozen-dna.html
Frozen bacteria repair their own DNA
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