A cyclic peptide has shattered an established theory about fish antifreeze.rnThe antifreeze glycoprotein (AFGP) was discovered in the 1960s in the blood and body fluids of the Antarctic icefish. It allows the fish to survive at temperatures as low as -2 ℃ by binding to small ice crystals and preventing them from growing to a size where they would be fatal.rnShin-Ichiro Nishimuraof the Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, designs synthetic analogues of natural AFGPs (syAFGPs) in an effort to understand the connection between their structure and their antifreeze properties. Earlier results from Nishimura's team have implied that the proteins need to contain a helix-type structure to possess antifreeze activity.
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