Bacterial ice-nucleation proteins

Bacterial ice-nucleation proteins octamer repeat
Identifiers
Symbol	Ice_nucleatn
Pfam	PF00818
InterPro	IPR000258
PROSITE	PDOC00283
Available protein structures: Pfam   structures / ECOD   PDB RCSB PDB; PDBe; PDBj PDBsum structure summary

Bacterial ice-nucleation proteins are a family of proteins that enable Gram-negative bacteria to promote nucleation of ice at relatively high temperatures (above −5 °C).[1][2] These proteins are localised at the outer membrane surface and can cause frost damage to many plants. The primary structure of the proteins contains a highly repetitive domain that dominates the sequence. The domain comprises a number of 48-residue repeats, which themselves contain 3 blocks of 16 residues, the first 8 of which are identical. It is thought that the repetitive domain may be responsible for aligning water molecules in the seed crystal.

             [.........48.residues.repeated.domain..........]
            /              / |              | \              \
           AGYGSTxTagxxssli  AGYGSTxTagxxsxlt  AGYGSTxTaqxxsxlt
           [16.residues...]  [16.residues...]  [16.residues...]

See also

• Ice-minus bacteria

References

1. Wolber PK, Green RL (October 1990). "Detection of bacteria by transduction of ice nucleation genes". Trends in Biotechnology. 8 (10): 276–9. doi:10.1016/0167-7799(90)90195-4. PMID 1366726.
2. Gurian-Sherman D, Lindow SE (November 1993). "Bacterial ice nucleation: significance and molecular basis". FASEB Journal. 7 (14): 1338–43. doi:10.1096/fasebj.7.14.8224607. PMID 8224607. S2CID 12368098.

This article incorporates text from the public domain Pfam and InterPro: IPR000258