Polar animals' antifreeze has a spiky secret

New Scientist ^ | April 16, 2011 | Colin Barras

[decimon]

TO SURVIVE in frigid polar regions, many cold-blooded creatures employ a natural antifreeze to protect themselves from the damage that large ice crystals would cause. These antifreeze molecules lock onto ice crystals, but not liquid water - though how they do this has been a mystery.

Now the mechanism has been revealed, opening the way to using similar molecules in cancer treatments, to protect healthy tissue while tumours are destroyed by freezing.

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) found in nature lock onto ice crystals and stop them growing large enough to damage tissue. If AFPs bound as easily to liquid water as they do to ice, this lifesaving action could turn killer, as animals would quickly dehydrate, says Matthew Blakeley at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble, France.

X-ray diffraction has already helped to show that the surface of the AFPs that binds to ice is covered in tiny hydrophobic spikes. Now, using neutron diffraction, which is more effective at showing up the hydrogen in water molecules, Blakeley and colleagues managed to catch four water molecules at the ice-binding surface of AFPs from a fish, the ocean pout (Zoarces americanus). The water molecules formed an arc resembling part of a six-molecule ring characteristic of ice crystals. At the centre of each ring is a nanoscale hole.

[ExpatCanuck]

Could have practical applications in chryogenic freezing without cell damage, no?

[decimon]

Could have practical applications in chryogenic freezing without cell damage, no?

I don't know. With cryogenics you want a frozen state so I don't know if this could apply.

[decimon]

Ping

[yellow rubber ducky]

Huh. All this time I thought the secret was ‘Vodka’.

[decimon]

Huh. All this time I thought the secret was ‘Vodka’.

As said by Ninotchka, "There will be fewer but better Russians." Doesn't really work.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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[SunkenCiv]

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[AdmSmith]

Picture in the supplementary info http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/jmr.1130/asset/supinfo/jmr_1130_sm_SuppMat.pdf?v=1&s=b0eebedd0b977d3841b3ae3ca3a77bd527b3b038

a related article with 60 water molecules http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/07/1100429108.full.pdf+html

[Talisker]

Could have practical applications in chryogenic freezing without cell damage, no?

Yep, unless you piss off the computer.

[BIGLOOK]

[Bellflower]

The utter and absolute genius of God. All man can hope to do is find out some of His inventions and clumsily duplicate them. He is truly astoundingly amazing!

[colorado tanker]

[Still Thinking]

Very poorly written article.