Anti-Ice Nucleation Activities of Tyrosine Peptide

We investigated whether trimers of serine, threonine, tyrosine, and phenylalanine which may interact with water molecules and ice, show anti-ice nucleation activity. Only tyrosine trimer had high levels of anti-ice nucleation activity (10.10±0.74℃) at a final concentration of 0.2 mM. This was constant at an activity of 2.0℃ between the 0.01-0.1 mM concentrations, and rapidly increased at 0.1 mM or more. At the final concentration of 0.2 mM or more, the activity of the tyrosine trimer was almost constant (from 9.2℃ to 10.2℃). Although it is lower than the activity against silver iodide, the tyrosine trimer showed an effect on the activity of the ice nucleating bacteria. This is the first report that revealed that trimer of amino acid, especially tyrosine has the supercooling-facilitating activity.