TraitMech

TraitMech › PHYSIOLOGY

magnetotaxis

traitmech:000176 · CLASS · PROPOSED

A behavioral physiology in which magnetosome-bearing motile cells align with geomagnetic field lines and navigate along that axis.

Trait evidence (3)

  • DOI:10.1128/JB.00398-20
    Magnetotactic bacteria are aquatic or sediment-dwelling microorganisms able to take advantage of the Earth's magnetic field for directed motility

    Muller et al. review bacterial magnetotaxis as directed motility aligned to Earth's magnetic field.

  • DOI:10.1038/s41396-018-0098-9
    The origin and evolution of magnetoreception, which in diverse prokaryotes and protozoa is known as magnetotaxis and enables these microorganisms to detect Earth's magnetic field for orientation and navigation

    Lin et al. define magnetotaxis as the magnetoreceptive orientation and navigation behavior of magnetotactic microorganisms.

  • DOI:10.1128/mbio.01649-23
    To efficiently navigate within the geomagnetic field, magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) align their magnetosome organelles into chains

    Awal et al. support the mechanism-level distinction that magnetosome chain alignment underlies geomagnetic navigation.

Provenance

Identifier source
TraitMech local identifier
Definition source
DOI:10.1128/JB.00398-20

Parent traits (1)

Synonyms (1)

  • magnetotactic RELATED_SYNONYM · DOI:10.1038/nrmicro842

kg-microbe context

No kg-microbe node embedding matched this record in the 2026-04-25 deepwalk.

Canonical examples (1)

Organisms cited as exemplars of this trait. Taxon ids are NCBITaxon and link out to the NCBI record.

  • Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense MSR-1 NCBITaxon:431944 DOI:10.1128/mbio.01649-23 Awal et al. used Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense as the genetically tractable host for functional expression of magnetotaxis-associated MamK-family magnetoskeleton proteins.

Curation history

  1. · MINTED_TRAITMECH_ID · codex

    Minted magnetotaxis as a DOI-backed TraitRecord after a repository-wide duplicate review covering ignored and hidden files; METPO has only an obsolete magnetotaxis class in the local snapshot and the replacement placeholder is reserved in proposals/metpo_traitmech_v53.

  2. · ADD_SYNONYM · codex

    Moved the adjectival magnetotactic related synonym from the magnetosome organelle record onto the new magnetotaxis physiology trait; resolves issue 851.

  3. · EDIT_EVIDENCE · codex

    Extended the Lin et al. magnetotaxis evidence snippet to the beginning of its source sentence after PR review requested stricter snippet verification; resolves issue 852.