Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystems

How do Antarctic Fishes Use Antifreeze to Survuve in Ice-Laden Water? 

Principal Investigator: Dr Clive Evans
Organisation: University of Auckland

How supercooled fishes utilise antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGPs) to survive in freezing Antarctic waters is an outstanding biological problem resolvable through the combination of biology and synthetic organic chemistry. We propose to chemically synthesize nonradioactively labeled AFGPs and to use the products to track the route by which secreted antifreeze is able to reach high levels in the circulation, to identify the cell type involved in ice crystal entrapment, and to characterize the likely receptor.