X-Message-Number: 8593
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 21:28:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: Protein Antifreeze

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In the August 21 1997 issue of Nature there is an article by Virginia K Walker 
and Peter L Davies about proteins found in insects that act as natural 
antifreeze. Protein antifreeze has been found before, in fish, but the one 
discovered in the budworm is 30 times as potent, and you'd need 100 times as 
much fish antifreeze to work as well as the one found in the mealworm. 
Both these new proteins are similar in that they have lots of repetitions of 
water loving amino acids like serine, threonine, cysteine and glycine. 
It's suspected that their structure is similar to that of water molecules in 
ice so the two fit together, at lest  that's what the fish protein does,
but the 3 dimensional shape of any of  the insect ones has not been found yet 
so maybe they work some other way.

Unfortunately they only lower the freezing point of water by 5.5 degrees 
centigrade and that's not enough to preserve things for more than a month or 
two, but there may be other advantages. When things get really cold and ice 
does form it's as smooth hexagonal disks, not dangerous sharp edges and 
pointy spikes which is what you get without any antifreeze or even if you  
use the one from fish. 

I wonder if this be of use in Cryonics. So far only very small amounts have 
been produced, but if anybody thought it was worth the bother I'm sure the 
gene that codes for the protein could be found and spliced into a bacteria or 
yeast and you could crank it out by  the ton. Just a thought.


                                               John K Clark   

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