A new quantitative method to measure activity of ice structuring proteins using differential scanning calorimetry

There are very few quantitative assays to measure the activity of antifreeze proteins (AFPs, or Ice Structuring Proteins, ISPs) and these can be prone to various inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Some methods rely only on unassisted visual assessment. When microscopy is used to measure ice crystal size, it is critical that standardized procedures be adopted, especially when image analysis software is used to quantify sizes. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) has been used to measure the thermal hysteresis activity (TH) of AFPs. In this study, DSC was used isothermally to measure enthalpic changes associated with structural rearrangements as a function of time. Differences in slopes of isothermal heat flow vs. time between winter wheat ISP or AFP type I containing samples, and those without ISP or AFP type I were demonstrated. ISP or AFP type I containing samples had significantly higher slopes compared to those without ISP or AFP type I. Samples with higher concentration of ISP or AFP type I showed higher slope values during the first hour and took up to 3 hr to attain equilibrium. Differences were attributed to activity of the proteins at the ice interface. Proteinaceous activity of ISPs or AFP type I was confirmed by loss of activity after treatment with protease.