Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 105, Issue 38, Pages 14395-14399Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803620105
Keywords
avian compass; cryptochrome; radical pair states; transient absorption spectroscopy; flavoprotein
Categories
Funding
- Electromagnetic Fields Biological Research Trust
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
- Royal Society
- Human Frontier Science Program
- International Association
- New Independent States of the former Soviet Union
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [SfB-498/A2, B7, SfB-533/A5]
- Hans-Fischer Gesellschaft
- Fonds der Chemischen Industrie
- EPSRC [EP/D048559/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/D048559/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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One of the two principal hypotheses put forward to explain the primary magnetoreception event underlying the magnetic compass sense of migratory birds is based on a magnetically sensitive chemical reaction. It has been proposed that a spin-correlated radical pair is produced photochemically in a cryptochrome and that the rates and yields of the subsequent chemical reactions depend on the orientation of the protein in the Earth's magnetic field. The suitability of cryptochrome for this purpose has been argued, in part, by analogy with DNA photolyase, although no effects of applied magnetic fields have yet been reported for any member of the cryptochrome/photolyase family. Here, we demonstrate a magnetic-field effect on the photochemical yield of a flavin-tryptophan radical pair in Escherichia coli photolyase. This result provides a proof of principle that photolyases, and most likely by extension also cryptochromes, have the fundamental properties needed to form the basis of a magnetic compass.
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