New Antifreeze Molecule Isolated In Alaskan Beetle

Arvisp writes with the news of a recently discovered antifreeze molecule in an Alaskan beetle that departs from most commonly identified natural antifreeze. "'The most exciting part of this discovery is that this molecule is a whole new kind of antifreeze that may work in a different location of the cell and in a different way,' said zoophysiologist Brian Barnes, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and one of five scientists who participated in the Alaska Upis ceramboides beetle project. Just as ice crystals form over ice cream left too long in a freezer, ice crystals in an insect or other organism can draw so much water out of the organism's cells that those cells die. Antifreeze molecules function to keep small ice crystals small or to prevent ice crystals from forming at all. They may help freeze-tolerant organisms survive by preventing freezing from penetrating into cells, a lethal condition. Other insects use these molecules to resist freezing by supercooling when they lower their body temperature below the freezing point without becoming solid."

Comments

Cryogenics?

[girlintraining]

Could this discovery be developed to make cryogenically preserving people work? As it is right now, the cells rupture during the freezing process -- if the cells remained intact, reviving them would become possible.

Re:Cryogenics?

[idontgno]

if the cells remained intact, reviving them would become possible.

Well, no more impossible than reviving them shortly after death, without the complications and damage (subtle or extreme) caused by freezing, or decapitating and freezing, or post-mortem whatnot.

I think the greater obstacle is the entire "reviving them after they're dead" bit.

Re:Cryogenics?

[wizardforce]

Rapid freezing of tissue should act in a similar fashion. THe problem of course is being able to freeze tissue at the rate required to form the glass-like phase of ice. I suspect that this antifreeze molecule may work in cryogenic preservation if it shows low toxicity/immune response from the host. Something to keep in mind about frozen tissue as well is the fact that even at these extremely low temperatures, chemical reactions that degrade the sample still occur so there is a limit to how long even the most sturdy cells (like cancer cells) can be stored. If the tissue is frozen for too long of a time, revival may prove to be unlikely or even impossible.

Re:Cryogenics?

[7Ghent]

Cryonics does not freeze tissue. The current method involves vitrification, not freezing. Vitrification is an ice-free process in which more than 60% of the water inside cells is replaced with protective chemicals. This completely prevents freezing during deep cooling. Instead of freezing, molecules just move slower and slower until all chemistry stops at the glass transition temperature (approximately -124C). Unlike freezing, there is no ice formation or ice damage in vitrified tissue. Blood vessels have been reversibly vitrified, and whole kidneys have been recovered and successfully transplanted after cooling to -45C while protected with vitrification chemicals.

Re:Cryogenics?

[Tubal-Cain]

I think the greater obstacle is the entire "reviving them after they're dead" bit.

It would still have practical applications, such as for long trips through space.

Re:Cryogenics?

[Shakrai]

Does that mean we'll finally be able to travel to Tau Ceti and give the Race a taste of it's own medicine?

Re:Cryogenics?

[Stupid McStupidson]

Only after we develop the ginger bomb.

Re:Cryogenics?

[MichaelSmith]

Y3K? COBOL programmers could be very valuable.

Re:Cryogenics?

[__aagmrb7289]

Not so much. We revive people "after they are dead" all the time - and they are significantly less healthy than a specimen frozen using cryogenics (theoretically, of course). The obstacles are that the cells must return to normal structure after being safely thawed. At that point, shocking the heart into action will return blood-flow to normal, along with helping the lungs to get started - thus getting oxygen circulating in the system and avoiding cells dying due to that cause. Once that's avoided, IF ALL CELLS ARE HEALTHY, the person is alive and in reasonably good shape.

Re:Cryogenics?

[severoon]

This is an interesting supposition, but there's no evidence that anything other than a quick revival would result in life being restored. We know that thermodynamically, the body is a veritable panic of high energy formations that are just dying to degrade (literally). We know that cryogenic freezing would suspend many of these processes...but all of the critical ones?

We've not yet begun to imagine what those processes even are, much less say with any certainty that cold temperature will suffice to prevent them over a sufficiently long period of time.

And then there's a whole segment of the population that will argue once the soul flies away, there's no getting it back. :-)

Re:Cryogenics?

[greyhueofdoubt]

This opens up a really gray area in terms of medical ethics. Here:

There are many documented cases of people being revived after prolonged (over one hour) 'death' caused by exposure to cold with few side-effects. However, and this is a BIG however- those people were "killed" by the cold; that is, they did not fall victim to leukemia and suddenly die, falling into icy water.

So...

The obvious(?) answer is to freeze people who are *near* death. Well, that's kind of murder/euthanasia according to the laws on the books. Without that particular issue, yeah, this would work great. But we'd have to come to accept this as preservation instead of euthanasia. We could work it until the chances of coming out of it alive were the same as surviving open-heart surgery or something comparable, but I think there would still be that mental/emotional block. Not to mention that critically-ill/hospice patients are already fragile. "Gramp is still alive but we're going to freeze him," still has a funeral feel. The person is, in effect, dying until revived when whatever criteria were met. If we don't cure cancer (for example) in our lifetime, then that *is* a funeral for the patient's family and friends.

-b

Re:Cryogenics?

[lena_10326]

Maybe communications could be sent through a small worm hole. Small because maintaining a large worm hole for passing ships through would require vast amounts of energy, but one small enough for a tiny communications pipe would become practical sooner. That would create a faster than light communications device (ansible) so that exploratory machines sent through space could then be controlled real time or close to real time by future generations. The machines could be sent today in hopes that by the time of arrival the technology will have been invented to send communications through a worm hole.

Re:Cryogenics?

[zacronos]

This is an interesting supposition, but there's no evidence that anything other than a quick revival would result in life being restored. We know that thermodynamically, the body is a veritable panic of high energy formations that are just dying to degrade (literally). We know that cryogenic freezing would suspend many of these processes...but all of the critical ones?

We've not yet begun to imagine what those processes even are, much less say with any certainty that cold temperature will suffice to prevent them over a sufficiently long period of time.

Quite the opposite, actually. There is evidence that in cases of cardiac arrest (where the body is generally healthy aside from the fact that the heart has stopped), slow revival can allow for a higher success rate after longer periods without oxygen, because the cells themselves only die hours after cessation of blood flow. If you read to page 2 of that link, you see that induced hypothermia is sometimes used precisely because it does help slow the process of cell death which follows clinical death. Granted, as far as I'm aware, we don't know that cryogenic freezing would suspend all of such processes, but the state of research in this area is much farther along than you seem to think.

Re:Cryogenics?

[reverseengineer]

There could be serious immunological issues with a compound like this. While it comes from a beetle, structurally this antifreeze seems to have a lot of similarity with bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS), which happen to be the endotoxins in Gram-negative bacteria. We produce the aptly-named lipopolysaccharide-binding protein to seek out LPS and raise the alarm to initiate an inflammatory cascade. In the abstract to the paper, it mentions that a thermal hysteresis effect of 3.7 degrees C was seen at a concentration of 5mg/mL. Making the very rough assumption that the same concentration would be necessary to adequately protect human cells against the deep freeze, the required dose might be hundreds of grams (not unreasonable, considering it would have to integrate into every cell). The toxic response to LPS varies, but bacterial septic shock usually requires about 1/1000th that concentration.

Of course, nothing is known about the human immune response to this just-discovered compound (which hasn't even beeen fully characterized), so it's wild speculation on my part that your immune system might mistake it for a bacterial endotoxin. But if that did turn out to be the case, ironically it wouldn't be the cold that would kill you- it would be a fever.

Re:Cryogenics?

[AndersOSU]

maybe we could put some kind of death panel in place to streamline the process.

wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

"ice crystals in an insect or other organism can draw so much water out of the organism's cells that those cells die"

I thought the main problem was that the ice crystals both become sharp (like a crystal) and grow a bit in volume (ice being less dense than water) -- so the ice would burst out of the cell ravangin the cell walls and everything else at the same time. ...but the leading idea to save the cell was to pull a treefrog -- have a protein that expells the water from the cell, freeze drying the cell, so it was not damaged and in theory would take water back up again at warmer temps, without said ice crystal damage...

For the record, i can't RTFA from where i'm posting.

Re:wait...

[Firehed]

For the record, i can't RTFA from where i'm posting.

Well of course not. This is Slashdot, after all.

Re:wait...

[wizardforce]

Unfortunately the summery took this bit drectly from TFA and it is as you'd suspect, technically incorrect. Ice breaks open the cells (lysing them) which causes the cell contents to spill out of the cell into whatever medium they are in. This quite predictably, kills the cells. However, ice that forms extremely rapidly forms a glass-like phase of ice that does less harm to the cells. The interesting things about this new antifreeze molecule are that 1) it's not a protein; it's a fairly simple molecule and 2) it's lipophillic (tends to hang around fatty things like cell membranes) which makes it a very useful discovery in terms of biological antifreeze molecules.

Re:wait...

[Thinboy00]

"so the ice would burst out of the cell ravaging the cell membranes and everything else at the same time." Plants have cell walls and cell membranes, animals only have cell membranes.

FTFY

YES!

[Mr.Fork]

Now they can develop a candy for kids in the wintertime so they can stop sticking their tongues to metal posts!

Re:YES!

[temmi]

Sorry... as long as there are metal posts kids will try and stick their tongues to them. It's the law of nature.

Re:YES!

[camperdave]

The problem is, of course, how do you go and fetch the warm water when your tongue is frozen to the pole.

On the down side...

[Trip6]

...the beetles have no protection against boil-over.

New organic anti-freeze

[formfeed]

Beetlejuice!

Science beats nature

[PPH]

I used to drive a 1963 Beetle. They don't need antifreeze!

Re:Don't engines use anti-freeze for their geers?

[Sillygates]

nope, that's just motor oil.

Antifreeze/coolant is only used in watercooled engines