Anhydrobiotic organisms

Crowe, J.H., and L.M. Crowe (1992). Membrane integrity in anhydrobiotic organisms toward a mechanism for stabilizing dry cells. In Water and Life, pp. 87-103, ed. G.N. Somero, C.B. Osmond, and C.L. Bolis. Berlin Springer-Verlag. 

Crowe JH, Crowe LM, Chapman D (1984) Preservation of membranes in anhydrobiotic organisms. The role of trehalose. Science 223 701-703... 

Metabolic activity has been measured in the desiccated state of seeds, spores, and anhydrobiotic organisms such as Artemia (Crowe and Clegg, 1973, 1978 Leopold, 1986). The threshold for metaboUc activity is generally 0.2—0.3 h. 

Biological systems are, by definition, multicomponent systems. One should keep in mind the difficulties of constructing molecular level pictures that satisfactorily describe systems such as a protein in a reverse micelle or a protein in a concentrated aqueous salt solution, which are certainly much simpler than anhydrobiotic organisms, for example. It is not clear to what extent the water of the hydration shell can be replaced by a third component (e.g., lipid) or what effect such replacement has on protein or enzyme properties. 

Connectivity has a central role in biochemistry and biology, and one imagines that the percolation model, with its focus on connectivity, should have wide application. Percolative behavior is to be expected for the coordinate functioning of systems of proteins in metabolic pathways, for functional interactions between proteins embedded in a membrane, for the interactions between domains in the folding of a polypeptide, or for the onset of function in anhydrobiotic organisms, seeds, and spores. 

Sun, WQ. and Leopold, A.C., Cytoplasmic vitrification and survival of anhydrobiotic organisms, Compar. Biochem. Physiol, 117A, 327,1997. 

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