Making magnets by microbes: How bacteria synthesize and organize magnetic organelles

Magnetotactic bacteria biosynthesize magnetosomes, which are membrane-enveloped nanocrystrals of a magnetic mineral. To serve as sensors for geomagnetic navigation in aquatic habitats, individual crystals are assembled into well-ordered nanochains to achieve one of the highest structural levels known in a prokaryotic cell. The talk will address the genetic and biochemical mechanisms governing the biomineralization of magnetic organelles as well as their intracellular organization and positioning in the model organism Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense. In addition, insights obtained from the analysis of uncultivated magnetic bacteria by metagenomic and single-cell techniques will be presented. Finally, recent synthetic-biology approaches to explore the biotechnological potential of these unique nano-magnetic structures will be discussed.
Professor Dr. Dirk Schüler studied biology at Greifswald University, where during his diploma work in 1990 he discovered one of the first magnetic bacteria, which he has continued to study ever since. After his doctoral thesis at MPI in Martinsried, and postdoctoral stays at Iowa State University and Scripps Oceanographic Institution San Diego, USA, he became a group leader at MPI in Bremen in 1999. Since 2006 he is professor for microbiology at LMU Munich. He now has accepted to become Chair of the Dept. of Microbiology at Bayreuth University starting in 2014. Dirk Schüler has been awarded the Otto Hahn Medal of Max Planck Society and the VAAM Promotionspreis and he received the BioFuture award of the BMBF.
Moderation: Professor Dr. Thomas Schweder