News
Published online: 26 November 2004; | doi:10.1038/news041122-13

Magnetic field benefits bacteria
Mark Peplow

Weak magnetism shown to affect chemical reaction inside cells.

Can magnetic fields affect living creatures? Scientists have spent decades
trying to understand how migrating birds might sense the Earth's magnetic
field, but have never isolated the biochemical reactions responsible.

Others believe that the magnetic fields produced by electrical power lines
might be harmful, yet no one has found convincing proof of how magnets could
have a biological effect.

Until now. Scientists have demonstrated that a weak magnetic field can
affects production of a certain molecule found in a photosynthetic
bacterium.

This is the first time a magnetic effect of this kind has been seen, says
Peter Hore, a physical chemist at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the
research effort.

Chemists already knew that magnetic fields can affect certain chemical
reactions involving radicals, molecules that contain unpaired electrons. But
these reactions rely on molecules not found in living creatures. The
question remained whether such magnetic-field effects occur in real
biological systems, says Thorsten Ritz, a biophysicist at the University of
California, Irvine.

Full Text at Nature
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041122/full/041122-13.html

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