Bacterium found to have strange magnetic personality

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Sheri Simmons uses a pipette to place water samples onto a microscope slide to look at the swimming behavior of magnetotactic bacteria. Her advisor and co-author Katrina Edwards is at left. Photo Tom Kleindinst Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Sheri Simmons uses a pipette to place water samples onto a microscope slide to look at the swimming behavior of magnetotactic bacteria. Her advisor and co-author, Katrina Edwards, is at left. Photo / Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Researchers led by an MIT graduate student have discovered a bacterium that is a magnetic misfit of sorts. Magnetotactic bacteria contain chains of magnetic iron minerals that allow them to orient in the Earth's magnetic field, like living compass needles. These bacteria have long been observed to respond to high oxygen levels in the lab by swimming toward geomagnetic north in the Northern Hemisphere and geomagnetic south in the Southern Hemisphere.


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