School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, People's Republic of China.
Key Laboratory of Green Printing, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.
Phys Rev E. 2017 May;95(5-1):052140. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.95.052140. Epub 2017 May 25.
Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) are the key biomolecules that protect many species from suffering the extreme conditions. Their unique properties of antifreezing provide the potential of a wide range of applications. Inspired by the present experimental approaches of creating an antifreeze surface by coating AFPs, here we present a two-dimensional random-field lattice Ising model to study the effect of AFPs on heterogeneous ice nucleation. The model shows that both the size and the free-energy effect of individual AFPs and their surface coverage dominate the antifreeze capacity of an AFP-coated surface. The simulation results are consistent with the recent experiments qualitatively, revealing the origin of the surprisingly low antifreeze capacity of an AFP-coated surface when the coverage is not particularly high as shown in experiment. These results will hopefully deepen our understanding of the antifreeze effects and thus be potentially useful for designing novel antifreeze coating materials based on biomolecules.
抗冻蛋白（AFPs）是保护许多物种免受极端条件影响的关键生物分子。它们独特的抗冻特性为广泛的应用提供了潜力。受目前通过涂覆 AFP 来制造抗冻表面的实验方法的启发，我们在这里提出了一个二维随机场格伊辛模型来研究 AFP 对非均相冰核形成的影响。该模型表明，单个 AFP 的大小和自由能效应及其表面覆盖率都主导着 AFP 涂覆表面的抗冻能力。模拟结果与最近的实验定性一致，揭示了当覆盖率并不特别高时，AFP 涂覆表面的抗冻能力出人意料地低的原因，这在实验中得到了体现。这些结果有望加深我们对抗冻效应的理解，从而为基于生物分子设计新型抗冻涂层材料提供潜在的帮助。
