C. elegans is not a robust model organism for the magnetic sense

Abstract

Magnetoreception is defined as the ability to sense and use the Earth’s magnetic field, for example to orient and direct movements. The receptors and sensory mechanisms underlying behavioral responses to magnetic fields remain unclear. A previous study described magnetoreception in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, which requires the activity of a single pair of sensory neurons. These results suggest C. elegans as a tractable model organism for facilitating the search for magnetoreceptors and signaling pathways. The finding is controversial, however, as an attempt to replicate the experiment in a different laboratory was unsuccessful. We here independently test the magnetic sense of C. elegans, closely replicating the assays developed in the original publication. We find that C. elegans show no directional preference in magnetic fields of both natural and higher intensity, suggesting that magnetotactic behavior in the worm is not robustly evoked in a laboratory setting. Given the lack of a robust magnetic response under controlled conditions, we conclude that C. elegans is not a suitable model organism to study the mechanism of the magnetic sense.