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Updated: Feb 15, 2026

Identification of Plant Ice-binding Proteins Through Assessment of Ice-recrystallization Inhibition and Isolation Using Ice-affinity Purification
Published on: May 5, 2017
Synthesis of Degradable Poly(vinyl alcohol) by Radical Ring-Opening Copolymerization and Ice Recrystallization
Guillaume Hedir1,2, Christopher Stubbs1, Phillip Aston1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, U.K.
Abstract:
Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) is the most active synthetic mimic of antifreeze proteins and has extremely high ice recrystallization inhibition (IRI) activity. Addition of PVA to cellular cryopreservation solutions increases the number of recovered viable cells due to its potent IRI, but it is intrinsically nondegradable in vivo. Here we report the synthesis, characterization, and IRI activity of PVA containing degradable ester linkages. Vinyl chloroacetate (VClAc) was copolymerized with 2-methylene-1,3-dioxepane (MDO) which undergoes radical ring-opening polymerization to install main-chain ester units. The use of the chloroacetate monomer enabled selective deacetylation with retention of esters within the polymer backbone. Quantitative IRI assays revealed that the MDO content had to be finely tuned to retain IRI activity, with higher loadings (24 mol %) resulting in complete loss of IRI activity. These degradable materials will help translate PVA, which is nontoxic and biocompatible, into a range of biomedical applications.
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