Acquisition of freeze protection in a sea-ice crustacean through horizontal gene transfer?

Abstract

Sea ice is permeated by small brine channels, which are characterised by sub-zero temperatures and varying salinities. Despite sometimes extreme conditions a diverse fauna and flora thrives within the brine channels. The dominant calanoid copepods of Antarctic sea ice are Stephos longipes and Paralabidocera antarctica. Here, I report for the first time thermal hysteresis (TH) in the haemolymph of a crustacean, S. longipes, whereas P. antarctica has no such activity. TH, the non-colligative prevention of ice growth, seems to enable S. longipes to exploit all available microhabitats within sea ice, especially the surface layer, in which strong temperature fluctuations can occur. In contrast, P. antarctica only thrives within the lowermost centimetres of sea ice, where temperature fluctuations are moderate. S. longipes possesses two isoforms of a protein with TH activity. A high homology to a group of (putative) antifreeze proteins from diatoms, bacteria and a snow mold and, in contrast, no homologs in any metazoan lineage suggest that this protein was obtained through horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Further analysis of available sequence data from sea-ice organisms indicates that these antifreeze proteins were probably transferred horizontally several times. Temperature and salinity fluctuations within the brine channel system are proposed to provide “natural transformation” conditions enabling HGT and thus making this habitat a potential “hot spot” for HGT.