Konrad Meister Recognized for Discovery of Ice-Nucleating Fungal Proteins

Pure water defies common sense: drop a glass of it to 32°F and it often refuses to freeze, slipping instead into a supercooled liquid that only solidifies once it finds a molecular template to latch onto. According to Boise State University, Assistant Professor Konrad Meister has now identified a previously unknown class of those templates — ice-nucleating proteins hiding inside fungi — earning a spot in the Top 10 Science Breakthroughs of the Year 2026 from the Falling Walls Science Summit.

The discovery

Meister's group, working through Boise State's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, published the result in Science Advances in March 2026. The finding matters because ice nucleation is the rate-limiting step in nearly every freezing event on the planet. Bacteria that catalyze the process have been mapped for decades; fungi were not. Closing that gap gives atmospheric scientists a more accurate inventory of the particles that seed clouds, glaciers, and frost, and it gives engineers a new toolkit of biological catalysts to deploy where freezing needs to happen on demand.

Why the timing matters

The breakthrough lands as industries dependent on controlled ice formation face tighter margins. Ski operators need reliable snowmaking at marginal temperatures; farmers need predictable frost protection for high-value crops; climate modelers need better parameterizations of how ice crystals form in mixed-phase clouds, one of the largest remaining sources of uncertainty in projections of warming and precipitation. A fungal protein that triggers freezing at near-zero temperatures is, in practical terms, a lever that can be pulled in each of those settings.

What to watch next

The immediate questions are scale and mechanism. Researchers will look for confirmation that the fungal proteins perform as published across different fungal species, and for structural data that explains why fungi evolved them at all. On the application side, expect pilot programs at ski resorts and agricultural test sites within the next two to three winters, alongside revised inputs for regional climate models. The Falling Walls recognition does not guarantee commercial uptake, but it does guarantee that the work now moves from a single lab bench into the wider research pipeline where it can be stress-tested against competing hypotheses — the next, and most decisive, phase.