Chem.ox.ac.uk : Humans perceive the world around them with five senses – vision, hearing, taste, smell and touch. Many other animals are also able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. For some time, a collaboration of biologists, chemists and physicists from the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Oldenburg (Germany) have been accumulating evidence that the magnetic sense in night migratory birds, such as the European robin, is based on a specific light‐sensitive protein in the eye. In the current edition of the journal Nature, this group demonstrates that the protein cryptochrome 4, found in birds’ retinas, is sensitive to magnetic fields and could well be the long‐sought magnetic sensor.
Henrik Mouritsen’s research group in Oldenburg succeeded in extracting the genetic code for cryptochrome 4 in night‐migratory European robins and then produced the protein in large quantities using bacterial cell cultures. Christiane Timmel’s and Stuart Mackenzie’s groups in the Oxford Chemistry Department then applied a wide range of magnetic resonance and novel optical techniques to study this protein and demonstrated its pronounced sensitivity to magnetic fields. The measurements required the development of new instruments by several generations of talented postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
La collaboration internationale met en lumière le mécanisme de détection magnétique chez les oiseaux
