Jan 18, 2009: Icefish

[xoxoxoBruce]

Antarctic Icefish, it doesn't live on the ice, but in water that's close, at minus 1.8 degrees C.
This is the only one of many fish in the southern ocean, that was able to survive and thrive after the Drake Passage opened up about 40 million years ago, allowing a current of cold water to isolate the continent and turn it into an icehouse.

Well so what? This fish has no red blood cells, and a minimal, very brittle skeleton. So scientists studying anemias and osteoporosis among other diseases, want to know how this thing survives.

“We’re interested in how the fish are able to fold their proteins in a cold, energy-poor environment,” explained Detrich in August, following a two-month excursion to Antarctica during the middle of the Southern Hemisphere winter.

Proteins, in the words of a somewhat famous cable guy, get ’er done: they’re behind many biological processes. As enzymes, they drive biochemical reactions that make biology work. They are the main constituent of muscles, hair, skin and blood vessels. As antibodies, they recognize intruders and prompt the immune system to get rid of the unwanted invaders.

In order to carry out its specific function, each protein must take on a unique three-dimensional shape, in a process called folding. Detrich’s group is particularly interested in how a complex called CCT chaperonin assists other proteins in the folding process, especially their role in the folding of tubulins that form microtubules. Microtubules are one of the components of the cytoskeleton, a structure maintains cell shape and cell motility.

Protein folding is often referred to as the “second genetic code,” according to Detrich, but scientists don’t understand the rules under which protein folding occurs. By observing protein folding at low temperatures, he said, it may be possible to develop insights into how protein folding works in all organisms.

Antarctica in the middle of winter? Sure, some scientists get all the cushy jobs.

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