"
Team:BCCS-Bristol/BSim/Case studies/Magnetotaxis
From 2009.igem.org
Magnetotaxis - an agent based approach
The videos illustrate the differences between the use of magnetotaxis and chemotaxis as a method of controlling the motion of the bacteria. The first video shows magnetotactic bacteria influenced by a magnetic field strength of 7.53x10^(-6) Tesla. The field direction controls the alignment of the bacteria, but not the speed that they travel at. The higher the field direction, the stronger the alignment of the bacteria with the field direction. The second video acts as a comparison against the magnetotactic control, using chemotaxis. The bacteria detect a change in the chemical concentration, and move towards the higher concentration, i.e. up the chemical gradient.
Several experiments were carried out on the bacteria. The first was to look at the effect of varying the magnetic field strength on the average velocity of the bacteria. The graph (Figure 1) below shows the result of this. As can be seen, there is a maximum average velocity of the bacteria after which increasing the magnetic field strength has no further effect on the magnetic dipole moment of the bacteria.
The next experiment was to compare the magnetotactic bacteria with the chemotactic effects on bacteria.
