BEIJING: Researchers in China have, for the first time, identified a key protein that plays a key role in biological compass in organisms helping them navigate using Earth’s magnetic field.
While it is long known that animals use their magnetic sense to detect Earth’s magnetic field and use this information for navigation, the precise nature of this mechanism has eluded scientists for years. Researchers have long establishes the molecular detail of senses such as vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch but haven’t been able to unravel the mysteries surrounding their magnetic sense until now.
A team led by Dr. XieCan at School of Life Sciences, Peking University have discovered a novel magnetoreceptor protein (named MagR) that is said to play a key role in the proposed biocompass model for animal magnetoreception and navigation.
For the purpose of the study, researchers screened the genome of fruit flies on the basis of rational biological assumptions and identified a novel magnetoreceptor (named MagR) that couples with units of a light-sensitive cryptochrome protein (Cry) and spontaneously aligns in the direction of external magnetic fields. Researchers say that this mechanism acts as a biological compass and it is the first time ever that such a mechanism has been identified for an organism to sense the magnetic field.
Researchers, using biochemical and biophysical methods, have also shown that the MagR/Cry complex is stable in the retina of pigeons and is evolutionarily conserved from insect to human, such as fruit flies, butterflies, pigeons, robins, rats, mole rats, sharks, turtles, and humans.
