Magnetic Navigation
By tony leather, 18th Jul 2012 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutNewsEnvironment
The ability to detect magnetic-sensitive cells in the lab could also help answer questions about whether people are at risk from magnetic fields produced by power lines and other equipment.
Magnetic Navigation
Sensing the Earth's magnetic field has been often presumed to be the way that Salmon, turtles and many birds migrate up to thousands of miles at a time, and scientists have finally identified cells - in the nose of the trout species of fish - that actually do respond to magnetism, at last a proper biological explanation of how animals orient themselves, finding their way, whatever the conditions
Michael Winklhofer - bio-geophysicist at the University of Munich - led the team making the discovery via a new method that opens up avenues for all sorts of futuristic applications. Miniaturized GPS systems, sight restoring, smell or hearing enhancing gene therapiesare among the possibilities.
The ability to detect magnetic-sensitive cells in the lab could also help answer questions about whether people are at risk from magnetic fields produced by power lines and other equipment.
The team studied olfactory tissues of trout - based their research on ten year-old research into magnetic fields affecting the electrical activity of nerves carrying information from the noses of the fish, but instead of grinding up tissues for analysis, they gently isolated whole cells, putting them into petri dishes for study
When rotating magnetic fields were applied one in 10,000 cells spun with the same frequency as the fields, closer inspection revealing crystals that are attached to the inside the cell membranes. These appear to contain iron-rich magnetic material magnetite. Not yet knowing how these structures work, it is thought that they trigger nerve impulses sending direction information to the brain of the fish.
The team worked out that each fish had 10 to 100 of these cells in its nose, as well as others in the so-called lateral line, which is a sensory organ in fish for the detection of vibrations in the vicinity. It is thought that - as magnetic fields penetrate the entire body - magnetically sensitive cells could be spread throughout the body, because if too close together, their effectiveness would be lessened.
Other recent research led to suggestions that magnetic cells lingering from ancestral hunter-gatherer days are still present in humans, meaning that power lines could cause internal cell stress, leading to unknown health problems. In yet more studies, it is hoped to identify genes and proteins responsible for producing magnetic-sensing cells.
Finding these might help explain how migrating animals manage such accurate journeys, which may lead to scientists taking cells not normally magnetically sensitive and making them so. possibly giving balance, hearing or smell back to someone who had lost these senses, just by putting the new cells into the brain or body, and turning them on or off with magnetic fields of certain wavelengths or frequencies, proving just how much nature still has to teach us.
Comments
19th Jul 2012 (#)
Very interesting study...thank you
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