Sensing magnetic fields with magnetosensitive ion channels

Abstract

Magnetic nanoparticles are met across many biological species ranging from magnetosensitive bacteria, fishes, bees, bats, rats, birds, to humans. They can be both of biogenetic origin and due to environmental contamination, being either in paramagnetic or ferromagnetic state. The energy of such naturally occurring single-domain magnetic nanoparticles can reach up to 10–20 room kB T in the magnetic field of the Earth, which naturally led to supposition that they can serve as sensory elements in various animals. This work explores within a stochastic modeling framework a fascinating hypothesis of magnetosensitive ion channels with magnetic nanoparticles serving as sensory elements, especially, how realistic it is given a highly dissipative viscoelastic interior of living cells and typical sizes of nanoparticles possibly involved.