Thermodynamic analysis of thermal hysteresis: Mechanistic insights into biological antifreezes

Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) bind to ice crystal surfaces and thus inhibit the ice growth. The mechanism for how AFPs suppress freezing is commonly modeled as an adsorption–inhibition process by the Gibbs–Thomson effect. Here we develop an improved adsorption–inhibition model for AFP action based on the thermodynamics of impurity adsorption on the crystal surfaces. We demonstrate the derivation of a realistic relationship between surface protein coverage and the protein concentration. We show that the improved model provides a quantitatively better fit to the experimental antifreeze activities of AFPs from distinct structural classes, including fish and insect AFPs, in a wide range of concentrations. Our theoretical results yielded the adsorption coefficients of the AFPs on ice, suggesting that, despite the distinct difference in their antifreeze activities and structures, the affinities of the AFPs to ice are very close and the mechanism of AFP action is a kinetically controlled, reversible process. The applications of the model to more complex systems along with its potential limitations are also discussed.

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► A thermodynamic consideration for thermal hysteresis (TH) caused by antifreeze proteins (AFPs) is given.
► A realistic relationship between the ice surface coverage by AFPs and the concentration of AFP is developed.
► The theoretical and experimental TH values of various AFPs are in good agreement.
► Mechanistic insights are given for biological antifreezes.