Towards noninvasive magnetic control of cells ? a global search for magnetoreceptors If biological cells could be controlled using magnetic fields, this would enable unprecedented approaches to basic biology and medicine. Ideally one would want a genetic tool that can render arbitrary cells magnetically sensitive, a goal now known as ?magnetogenetics?. Several attempts to accomplish this by de novo bioengineering have failed, mainly because magnetic fields interact only weakly with biological molecules. At the same time we know that certain animal species have the remarkable ability to sense the Earth's magnetic field and to use this information for orientation and navigation. Thus there must exist nerve cells with the mechanism to transduce even weak magnetic fields: the magnetoreceptors. If one could find those receptor neurons, they would reveal a cellular pathway that could be used for magnetic control. Remarkably the identity and mechanism of magnetoreceptor neurons is still unknown. The approach proposed here is to first search for neural signals anywhere in the brain that respond to magnetic stimuli. Based on those signals one can engage a magnetic scanning method to localize where the magnetic responses originate. Ultimately this will lead to the receptor cells. The first and essential step is to find an unambiguous neuronal response to magnetic fields in any species. The research presented here will accomplish this through a collective science project that will coordinate many laboratories for a short duration. These days scores of research groups are engaged in high-throughput neuroscience pursuing a broad range of questions in diverse species. Revolutionary improvements in the tools of neurophysiology enable experiments that routinely record signals from hundreds to thousands of neurons at a time. The project will transiently engage about 50 of these laboratories in a broad unbiased search for magnetoreceptors. Building on personal contacts the PI has already secured agreement from an illustrious list of pilot collaborators to offer experimental time and share data. The Caltech team will construct electromagnetic stimulators that produce a defined magnetic field and ship these to each partner lab. The device can be added easily to an ongoing experiment, and a mere 20 minutes of recording will reveal whether any of the neurons under study carry magnetic signals. The team will collect all the resulting data and analyze them for magnetic responses. A positive finding will immediately be subject to independent replication. By the end of the two-year period the project is expected to screen several million neurons in many different animal species and brain areas for magnetic responses, at least a 100-fold increase over the cumulative effort to date. If this exploratory research program yields magnetoreceptors in any species, that will set the stage for future work that unlocks their biophysical mechanisms and ultimately realizes the dream of magnetogenetics.
Towards noninvasive magnetic control of cells ? a global search for magnetoreceptors If biological cells could be controlled by magnetic fields, this would enable entirely new approaches to research and medicine. Whereas attempts to engineer such magnetic control have been unsuccessful, we know that some species of animals can naturally react to the Earth's magnetic field. This project will engage a large collaboration of brain research groups in a high-throughput search for naturally occurring magnetoreceptive neurons, opening the way to engineering magnetic control into other cells.
