Abstract
Certain bacteria promote the formation of ice in super-cooled water by means of ice nucleators which contain a unique protein associated with the cell membrane1. Ice nucleators in general are believed to act by mimicking the structure of an ice crystal surface, thus imposing an ice-like arrangement on the water molecules in contact with the nucleating surface and lowering the energy necessary for the initiation of ice formation2. Quantitative investi-gation of the bacterial ice-nucleating process has recently been made possible by the discovery of certain bacteria that shed stable membrane vesicles with ice nucleating activity3. The opposite effect, inhibition of ice formation, has been described for a group of glycoproteins found in different fish and insect species4,5. This group of substances, termed antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGPs), promotes the supercooling of water with no appreciable effect on the equilibrium freezing point or melting temperature6. Substantial evidence now indicates that AFGPs act by binding to a growing ice crystal and slowing crystal growth7,8. As the ice-nucleating protein surface is believed to have a structure similar to an embry-onic ice crystal, AFGPs might be predicted to interact directly with a bacterial ice-nucleating site. We report here that AFGPs from the antarctic fish Dissostichus mamoni inhibit the ice-nucleating activity of membrane vesicles from the bacterium Erwinia herbicola. The inhibition effect shows saturation at high concentration of AFGP and conforms to a simple binding reaction between the AFGP and the nucleation centre.
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Parody-Morreale, A., Murphy, K., Cera, E. et al. Inhibition of bacterial ice nucleators by fish antifreeze glycoproteins. Nature 333, 782–783 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1038/333782a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/333782a0
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