RATIONAL DESIGN AND SYNTHESIS OF ANTIFREEZE-PROTEIN INSPIRED POLYMERS FOR ANTI-ICING COATINGS AND CRYOPRESERVATION APPLICATIONS

• Main Author: Mousazadehkasin, Mohamamd
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/2687; https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3686&context=dissertation

Certain organisms living in cold regions have adapted different strategies to survive in harshly cold temperatures. Some of them use freeze-avoiding strategies in which they can prevent freezing by controlling the concentration of sugars (et. sucrose, trehalose) or polyols (glycerol), regulation of the ice nucleator, and dehydration. Other organisms have adapted to this extremely cold condition by producing antifreeze (gly)proteins (AF(G)Ps) which exhibit ice recrystallization inhibition (IRI), thermal hysteresis activity (THA), and dynamic ice crystal shaping. These proteins discovered in Antarctic fish in 1960 for the first time have been reported in bacteria, fungi, insects, and plants. AF(G)Ps and their synthetic biomimetics have received increasing attention as potential candidates for various industrial and bio-medical applications. Promising results from vitrification and other protocols using antifreeze agents with ice recrystallization inhibition activity have widely been reported in biopreservation. Conversely, understanding of the antifreezing process caused by these macromolecules remains under challenge. This is due to the multifunctional nature of the freezing process and antifreeze macromolecule’s behavior which brings complexity in designing the synthetic antifreeze structures. In addition, the cost, low availability, toxicity at higher concentrations, and instability beside several other drawbacks make their large-scale production challenging. Although several synthetic attempts for the exploitation of AFPs have been studied in the past, challenges remain in the synthetic design of AFP analogs. On the other hand, poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) with simple structure has been reported with potent IRI activity as a good candidate for large-scale production and applications. Our group has explored structural variations to polyol-based polymers to contrast with PVA as a control and identified several key structural elements for performance in IRI, THA, as well as in ice nucleation inhibition (INI). These ...