[blaze (OP)]

I was reading about how certain types of bacteria have a magnetic sense, and I was wondering if our love of wireless technologies (cell phones and their corresponding masts, cordless phones and their base stations, wireless internet, etc...) could be fueling superbugs such as Lyme and MRSA?

[blaze (OP)]

'Cross Currents' by Robert O. Becker M.D. – page 72.

"In 1975, Professor Richard Blakemore, also of Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, became intrigued by the strange behavior of some bacteria he was studying. Blakemore noticed that the bacteria always clustered at the north side of their culture dish. Even if he turned the dish so that they were at the south end and left it overnight, the next morning the bacteria were back at the north side. While such “magnetotrophic” bacteria had been described before, no one had ever done what Blakemore did next: he looked at them under the electron microscope. What he found was astonishing. Each bacterium contained a chain of tiny magnets! The magnets were actually crystals of the naturally magnetic mineral magnetite, the original lodestone of preliterate peoples. Somehow, the bacteria absorbed the soluble components from the water and put them together in their bodies as the insoluble crystalline chain.

Later studies showed that this arrangement was of value to these bacteria, which lived in the mud on the bottom of shallow bays and marshes. If they were moved by the tide or by storm waves, their magnetic chains were large enough (in comparison to their body size) to physically turn their bodies so that they pointed down at an angle corresponding to the direction of magnetic north. All the bacteria had to do was swim in that direction, and sooner or later they would be back in the mud. This was an interesting mechanism, but it did not contain any sophisticated information transfer. The bacteria did not “know” that north was the way to swim; they just did so. However, these observations opened up a much more interesting series of investigations."

[Bored chemist]

Intersting stuff. I gather that recent experiments have shown that cows tend to face magnetic North. While this is fascinating research (not least because the research method was to find pictures of cows on Google earth which is a neat trick) it cannot have anything to do with the effect of AC fields because, over any sensible timescale, the average effect is zero.

[BenV]

I think magneto-tactic bacteria are quite rare, and none of the antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' around demonstrate magnetic components.  There's some very interesting work going on with magnetotactic bacteria in Edinburgh at the moment - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/891/

[blaze (OP)]

Interesting article - this is the same guy, Blakemore, mentioned by Dr. Becker.

But all bacteria must have at least some charge - isn't that why we classify them as gram-negative and gram-positive? and the spirochete that causes Lyme Disease is cork-screwed shaped, too.

And since most doctors in the US are denying 'chronic Lyme' exists, how could they possibly be studying its charge in relation to the electromagnetic fields and currents surrounding us?

And bored chemist, I've been reading that it might be the alternating currents that are adversely disrupting the biological functions of living organisms (what we use to power our toasters, etc...), because with alternating current the charges switch back and forth 50 or 60 times per second, depending on where a person lives. If we were using direct current instead, our cells might not be so confused.

Direct current is what Dr. Becker used to stimulate regeneration in his experiments.

[BenV]

Gram-Negative and positive refer to whether or not the bacterial cells retain a certain pigment during Gram staining (a staining process named after Hans Gram).

[blaze (OP)]

But doesn't their charge have something to do with whether they retain the stain?

[BenV]

No, it's to do with the protein structure of the cell wall.  Nice diagram on wiki...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gram-Cell-wall.svg

[Bored chemist]

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=17742.msg202245#msg202245