X-Message-Number: 8593 Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 21:28:47 -0700 (PDT) From: John K Clark <> Subject: Protein Antifreeze -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBNBtju303wfSpid95AQEx1wTwoyV6pr05jE0ShTDKm4nZ86/duoDwszFH OH2vqHDFn+NXwFOehIYgP4ajt3kyUhQRf3TPgFUri5Vp1FKzUW1cugASKWXfVGTd bpNfszP0g5khKPhvn0X/icRsPgLopzJpojiIeJi5s/32Igtv/2K8KsXNbpUWXDJg uU1BRcxHGNevl2XGpnHYlWfTN01I3J6ySfqHib8DAC4lp3eGj8s=L0Ga -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8593