Significance of conservative asparagine residues in the thermal hysteresis activity of carrot antifreeze protein

The approximately 24-amino-acid leucine-rich tandem repeat motif (PXXXXXLXXLXXLXLSXNXLXGXI) of carrot antifreeze protein comprises most of the processed protein and should contribute at least partly to the ice-binding site. Structural predictions using publicly available online sources indicated that the theoretical three-dimensional model of this plant protein includes a 10-loop beta-helix containing the approximately 24-amino-acid tandem repeat. This theoretical model indicated that conservative asparagine residues create putative ice-binding sites with surface complementarity to the 1010 prism plane of ice. We used site-specific mutagenesis to test the importance of these residues, and observed a distinct loss of thermal hysteresis activity when conservative asparagines were replaced with valine or glutamine, whereas a large increase in thermal hysteresis was observed when phenylalanine or threonine residues were replaced with asparagine, putatively resulting in the formation of an ice-binding site. These results confirmed that the ice-binding site of carrot antifreeze protein consists of conservative asparagine residues in each beta-loop. We also found that its thermal hysteresis activity is directly correlated with the length of its asparagine-rich binding site, and hence with the size of its ice-binding face.