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COMPARATIVE AND EVOLUTIONARY PHYSIOLOGY

Rapid cold-hardening in larvae of the Antarctic midge Belgica antarctica: cellular cold-sensing and a role for calcium

¹Department of Zoology, Miami University, Oxford; and ²Department of Entomology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Submitted 27 June 2007 ; accepted in final form 12 April 2008

In many insects, the rapid cold-hardening (RCH) response significantly enhances cold tolerance in minutes to hours. Larvae of the Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, exhibit a novel form of RCH, by which they increase their freezing tolerance. In this study, we examined whether cold-sensing and RCH in B. antarctica occur in vitro and whether calcium is required to generate RCH. As demonstrated previously, 1 h at –5°C significantly increased organismal freezing tolerance at both –15°C and –20°C. Likewise, RCH enhanced cell survival of fat body, Malpighian tubules, and midgut tissue of larvae frozen at –20°C. Furthermore, isolated tissues retained the capacity for RCH in vitro, as demonstrated with both a dye exclusion assay and a 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT)-based viability assay, thus indicating that cold-sensing and RCH in B. antarctica occur at the cellular level. Interestingly, there was no difference in survival between tissues that were supercooled at –5°C and those frozen at –5°C, suggesting that temperature mediates the RCH response independent of the freezing of body fluids. Finally, we demonstrated that calcium is required for RCH to occur. Removing calcium from the incubating solution slightly decreased cell survival after RCH treatments, while blocking calcium with the intracellular chelator BAPTA-AM significantly reduced survival in the RCH treatments. The calmodulin inhibitor N-(6-aminohexyl)-5-chloro-1-naphthalenesulfonamide hydrochloride (W-7) also significantly reduced cell survival in the RCH treatments, thus supporting a role for calcium in RCH. This is the first report implicating calcium as an important second messenger in the RCH response.

insect cold-hardening; rapid acclimation; calcium signaling; freeze-tolerant insects

This article has been cited by other articles:

				J. S. Terblanche CALCIUM: A KEY PLAYER IN RAPID COLD-HARDENING J. Exp. Biol., October 1, 2008; 211(19): iv - v. [Full Text] [PDF]