Post

What links Antarctic adaptation to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease? The answer is in the cells from some very cool fish 🐟 Scientists from British Antarctic Survey and @ceb.cam.ac.uk have just looked inside living Antarctic fish cells for the first time... 🧵 1/8

It's a story of firsts. This was the first time Antarctic fish cells have been grown (“culturing” cells). They also had to use a new microscope that could do cutting-edge fluorescence microscopy at 0°C. This means we can see the processes inside the living cells! 🧵 2/8

The team grew cells from Antarctic spiny plunderfish. Huge shout out to our special guy, harpagifer antarcticus 🫡 The imaging reveals how cold fish have adapted to survive at a chilly -1.8ºC to 2ºC on a cellular level: Their bodies are slow - but their cells are very active. 🧵 3/8

The cold causes difficulties for normal cell function, like inefficient protein folding - the process which shapes chains of amino acids for jobs in the cell. Cold fish have larger, very active networks of mitochondria (the engines of the cell), which scientists think helps protect them. 🧵 4/8

Low temperatures make mistakes in protein folding more likely. A misfolded protein can be really harmful, so cold-adapted cells need ways of dealing with them... Well, our guys the cold fish also have bigger lysosomes - which dispose of the misfolded proteins! 🧵 5/8

This imaging will help find out why Antarctic species are struggling with climate change on a cellular level. We know that Antarctic animals are incredibly vulnerable to climate change. Raising temperatures just a few degrees can be lethal - so what's the source of these biological limits? 🧵 6/8

But ALSO this could be huge for medicine. Protein misfolding is a key feature of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s. What could these extra large and productive protein mistake-binning cells in cold fish help us learn? 🧵7/8