Team:Penn/Magnetism

AMB-1 is most useful for synthetic biology because of its rare capacity to align with magnetic fields. We attempted to explore the magnetic properties of AMB-1 as further understanding would prove AMB-1’s value as a chassis in bioremediation and other fields.

Relationship Between OD600 and T2 for AMB-1

We hoped to quantify the magnetic strength of AMB-1 using spin-spin relaxation time (T2 time) and relate it to the cell concentration (OD600). To do so, we used a magnetic NMR machine (the minispec mq60, Bruker) to measure the T2 decay time of cell samples (Fig. 1). A longer T2 time indicated fewer magnetic particles, and therefore weaker magnetic properties.

Figure 1:

Results:

Since the relationship between the inverse of T2 and OD was linear, this data supports that each cell has roughly the same number of magnetosomes, and that a greater number of these magnetosomes can be correlated with stronger magnetic properties. The cell concentration and magnetic strength showed a linear relationship (1/T2) =(0.002x + 0.0016) with an R^2 = 0.704.

The following video of AMB-1 was taken under 1000X magnification.