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When it comes to cool customers, it doesn\u2019t get much cooler than this: variegated snailfish, small fish that live off the coast of Greenland, have the largest amount of antifreeze proteins in their bodies ever measured<\/a>, researchers at the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York (CUNY) have found.<\/p>\n However, this specialist adaptation may put them at risk of survival as water temperatures rise due to climate change<\/a>, the researchers say.<\/p>\n As fish are unable to survive any amount of freezing in their bodies \u2013 unlike several species of reptiles such as garter snakes \u2013 some species living in the Arctic have evolved<\/a> the ability to produce antifreeze proteins in their livers that help to prevent ice crystals forming inside their cells and causing them harm.<\/p>\n When investigating the genome of snailfish, or Liparis gibbus<\/em>, to study their unusual bioluminescent properties, the team noticed that the fish have two different types of gene families involved in the encoding of antifreeze proteins \u2013 the highest levels ever observed.<\/p>\n \u201cSimilar to how antifreeze in your car keeps the water in your radiator from freezing in cold temperatures, some animals have evolved amazing machinery that prevent them from freezing, such as antifreeze proteins, which prevent ice crystals from forming,\u201d said Prof David Gruber<\/a>, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already knew that this tiny snailfish, which lives in extremely cold waters, produced antifreeze proteins, but we didn\u2019t realize just how chock-full of those proteins it is\u2014and the amount of effort it was putting into making these proteins.\u201d<\/p>\n However, this adaptation may prove to be the snailfish\u2019s eventual undoing. Thanks to ocean temperatures around the world rising, some predictions estimate that the Arctic Ocean may be mostly ice-free within the next three decades. This could lead to the snailfish being outcompeted by other species moving into their patch, the researchers say.<\/p>\n \u201cArctic seas do not support a high diversity of fish species, and our study hypothesises that with increasingly warming oceanic temperatures, ice-dwelling specialists such as this snailfish may encounter increased competition by more temperate species that were previously unable to survive at these higher northern latitudes,\u201d said Prof John Sparks<\/a>, a curator in the Museum\u2019s Department of Ichthyology<\/p>\n Read more about fish:<\/strong><\/p>\n By Jason Goodyer Published: Tuesday, 16 August 2022 at 12:00 am When it comes to cool customers, it doesn\u2019t get much cooler than this: variegated snailfish, small fish that live off the coast of Greenland, have the largest amount of antifreeze proteins in their bodies ever measured, researchers at the American Museum of Natural History […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":16926,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters.jpg",1200,672,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters-300x168.jpg",300,168,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters-768x430.jpg",768,430,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters-1024x573.jpg",800,448,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters.jpg",1200,672,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2022\/08\/fish-chock-full-of-antifreeze-protein-found-in-sub-zero-arctic-waters.jpg",1200,672,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jason Goodyer Published: Tuesday, 16 August 2022 at 12:00 am When it comes to cool customers, it doesn\u2019t get much cooler than this: variegated snailfish, small fish that live off the coast of Greenland, have the largest amount of antifreeze proteins in their bodies ever measured, researchers at the American Museum of Natural History…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/16925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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