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Magnetic Proteins

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  • 18-11-2015 3:51pm
    #1
    GLaDOS
    Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 23,223 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    A really cool paper published in the other day in Nature Materials describes a protein complex and receptor discovered in Drosophila that appear to interact with magnetic fields. It's well known that some animals interact with the earth's magnetic field but this provides a fundamental into how they may sense it.

    http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4484.html
    The notion that animals can detect the Earth’s magnetic field was once ridiculed, but is now well established. Yet the biological nature of such magnetosensing phenomenon remains unknown. Here, we report a putative magnetic receptor (Drosophila CG8198, here named MagR) and a multimeric magnetosensing rod-like protein complex, identified by theoretical postulation and genome-wide screening, and validated with cellular, biochemical, structural and biophysical methods. The magnetosensing complex consists of the identified putative magnetoreceptor and known magnetoreception-related photoreceptor cryptochromes (Cry), has the attributes of both Cry- and iron-based systems, and exhibits spontaneous alignment in magnetic fields, including that of the Earth. Such a protein complex may form the basis of magnetoreception in animals, and may lead to applications across multiple fields.

    I particularly like this image, which demonstrates cyrstalised proteins interacting with an external magnetic field.

    Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test



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