Wednesday, April 28, 2010

April 28, 2010 : Antarctic Icefish



Antarctic Icefish 

These fish can withstand temperatures that would turn most fish to ice. Their ability to live in the cold – and oxygen-rich – extremes is so extraordinary that they make up more than 90 percent of the fish biomass of the Southern Ocean.

University of Illinois animal biology professor Arthur DeVries discovered in the late 1960s that some notothenioids manufacture their own "antifreeze proteins." These proteins bind to ice crystals in the blood to prevent the fish from freezing.

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