Flash-Freezing Squirrels

tessaiga writes "ABCNews has an article describing how a student at the University of Alaska (PDF) is conducting research involving supercooling arctic ground squirrels. During hibernation, these squirrels have the ability to reduce their food requirements to almost nothing by supercooling their bloodstream and dropping their internal temperatures to 26F (6 degrees below freezing!). Scientists are investigating how the process occurs without particles in the bloodstream triggering crystalization. The article goes on to mention applications in treating accident victims (to extend the 'golden hour' before brain damage occurs) and human suspended animation."

Comments

it's not similar; it's antifreeze

[js7a]

so you can cool liquid water below freezing by keeping it perfectly still. And in a similar(?!) way, a squirrel keeps its fluids moving below freezing? Sorry. How's that similar?

Good point. I remember reading about these critters years ago, but I can't find anything pertinent on the web right now. I distinctly remember that the supercooling of liquid water has nothing to do with the squirrels' below-freezing survival. Their secret is instead similar to Prestone.

The way I remember it, the squirrels have some kind of a pervasive antifreeze enzyme in their cell cytoplasm, membranes, and fluids. Since it's pervasive enough to keep everything from ice damage, it's probably produced from simple gene expression (i.e. not in a gland or a specialized tissue), which means, you can probably splice the gene into a whole heck of a lot of things. Not just rodents; maybe oranges, and other frost-sensitive crops. Maybe people.

I'm pretty amazed with the unlikelyhood of the research described in the ABCnews article. I'm somewhat ambivalent about the kind of genetic engineering involved, but this is certainly worth looking at.