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What Is Anti-Freeze Crystals?

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Certain fungi, and some other organisms survive in subzero environments. Fungi with anti-freezing properties, have one class of polypeptide that bind to tiny ice crystals, called anti-freeze proteins (AFPs). The freezing weather can be lethal to the organisms. AFPs block the growth and regrowth of ice. AFPs are also called ice structuring proteins (ISPs). Amir Haji-Akbari et al describes AFPs, as interesting class of biomolecules that hinder macroscopic freezing by binding to small ice crystals and blocking their further growth (Haji-Akbari, 2016). The AFPs block the thermodynamically favored growth of the ice crystal at the junction between solid ice and liquid water (Jorov, Zhorov and Yang, 2004). The separation between the melting point …show more content…

It sticks onto dormant plants and secretes a product of AFP, called TisAFP toward the outside of cells under snow cover (Xiao et al., 2009). An isoform of TisAFP, called TisAFP8 showed high TH activity and a dendritic ice growth pattern that indicated it also binds to the basal planes of ice, as do hyperactive AFPs. The hyperactive AFPs are better at preventing ice growth out of the basal planes, whereas the non-hyperactive AFPs bind to the surface of ice crystals and lower the non-equilibrium freezing temperature of the icy solution below its melting point. TisAFP6 is another isoform of TisAFP with different resolution, in which the ice-binding site of TisAFP6 is located on the flattest surface. The surface is devoid of regular arrays of side-chain OH groups, which are observed on β-helical hyperactive AFPs. History: In the 1950s, Scholander et al., described the survivability of Arctic fish in chilly water environment that is far colder than the freezing point of their own blood. He believed there was some type of “antifreeze” in the blood of Arctic fish (Scholander et al., 1957). Another biologist, in the late 1960s, isolated an antifreeze protein in the Antarctic fish (DeVries and Wohlschlag, 1969). In the 1970s, the chemical and physical properties of some antifreeze proteins was defined (DeVries, Komatsu and Feeney, 1970). In 1992, Griffith et al, discovered AFP in winter rye leaves (Griffith et al., 1992). Urrutia et al, around the same time, isolated

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