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My lab:
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The first talk of this meeting was by Dennis Willows on magnetotactic behavior of the slug Tritonia. These animals apparently orient themselves with respect to the earth's magentic field to find the shoreline where food and mates are. Most of the talk was about neurons in the brain of the animal which respond to magnetic stimuli. It turned out that they control the frequency of ciliate cells in the foot of the animal, such that a change in the magnetic field leads to turning of the animal by changing the beating frequency of the ciliate cells on one side of the animal. However, these neurons appear to be downstream of yet unknown sensory neurons. In 20 years of research, the researchers haven't found the cells which sense the magnetic field and transmit the information to the neurons in the brain. Dennis told us about strange electron dense particles in the foot of the animal which are good candidates for the organelles sensing the magnetic field, but this is where the research stands at the moment.
Posted on Wednesday 06 June 2007 - 20:21:31 comment: 0
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