The molecular tricks bacteria use to make ice

Ice active bacteria promote the growth of ice more effectively than any other material known. Using specialized ice nucleating sites, they attack plants by frost damage and, when airborne in the atmosphere, they drive ice nucleation within clouds and control global precipitation patterns. Therefore ice proteins play a tremendous role for life on our planet and would be important to include in climate models. In addition, we could learn from the best how to control freezing in food preservation, cryo medicine and ice control. Yet, it is extremely challenging to probe the interaction of the surface of bacterial ice nucleation sites with a few layers of water molecules. It has never even been tried. In the past years we have developed high fidelity methods to probe complex molecular surfaces. In this project we will make a first attempt for a breakthrough in understanding biological freezing.