Talk:Magnetotactic bacteria and their application

Jessie Griffith - Nice work, Grant! I really enjoyed reading your page on Magnetotactic bacteria. The part of the page that I found the most interesting was definitely the last section where you really get into how humans can harness the power of these microbes to benefit scientific processes like DNA extraction and potentially even helping to deal with cancer. The section about cancer really got me thinking though; if the magnetosomes are becoming superheated once they have diffused into the cells and that is what causes them to destroy the cells, what is the likelihood that some magnetosomes will diffuse into regular cells and destroy those as well? Have there been any studies on scar tissue formation from burning out the cells, and if so, is there potential for these burned cells to become cancerous in it of themselves? Just a few things that came to my mind when I was reading this. Overall, this is a high quality page that is well written and fun to learn about. Great job!

This is a really cool and interesting page! One question I had was about MTB and its ecology: how do they survive / are present in Lake Mono (or other lakes) that are not an ideal environment for them? I know you mentioned this towards the end of the section but I wanted to know if there was a special mechanism that enabled a small amount of them to live in unfavorable environments. Otherwise, it was a very good page! I really enjoyed seeing the tests on mice. - Marysol

Interesting stuff, Grant. I think your page is really well put together, and I would suggest many changes. However, I thought I found myself wondering about application when you said they could be useful in visualizing magnetic domains. I don't know what magnetic domains are, or the extent to which MTB can be used in visualizing them. It'd be cool to give a couple examples of magnetic domains, and the significance of visualizing them with MTB. Also I think this is a run on sentence: "Some of the first research in this field was done by Matsunaga and Kamiya 1987, where they limited the functions of enzymes glucose oxidase and uricase by immobilizing them crystals of synthetic magnetite harvested from magnetosomes." - Jack