Freezer burn might sound like a minor inconvenience reserved for ruining your late-night ice cream plans, but ice crystals have far more dangerous consequences at a microscopic level, wreaking havoc on cells and biologics during transport. Steering clear of toxic solutions like ethylene glycol, chemists from the University of Utah have looked to nature, particularly the fish that swim the frigid polar seas, devising an innovative, synthetic mimic of fish blood proteins to stop ice in its tracks.
The breakthrough here is that these antifreeze-like proteins can be manufactured at scale thanks to the team simplifying the complex protein structures just to the elements needed for freeze prevention, which in turn dramatically reduces production costs, yet their research brings us synthetic polypeptides powerful enough to stop ice crystal formation, cold pun intended. Research, published in Advanced Materials, saw these proteins successfully prevent the formation of ice in ice cream kept at minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit and safeguard the anti-cancer drug Trastuzumab at temperatures diving to minus 323 degrees F.
Associate Professor Jessica Kramer and graduate student Thomas McParlton took the lead on the study, which was backed by the National Science Foundation, by pinpointing the physical and chemical characteristics of natural antifreeze proteins that give them their ice-inhibiting abilities. "Ultimately, we simplified the structure to only the parts we thought were required for antifreeze activity, which makes production less complicated and expensive," Kramer told AtTheU.
