Chemical signature of magnetotactic bacteria

摘要: There are longstanding and ongoing controversies about the abiotic or biological origin of nanocrystals magnetite. On Earth, magne-totactic bacteria perform biomineralization intracellular magne-tite nanoparticles under a controlled pathway. These ubiquitous in modern natural environments. However, their identification ancient geological material remains challenging. Together with physical mineralogical properties, chemical composition magnetite was proposed as promising tracer for bacterial magnetofossil identification, but this had never been explored quantitatively systematically many trace elements. Here, we determine incorporation 34 elements both cases aqueous precipitation production by magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum magneticum strain AMB-1. We show that, biomagnetite, most at least 100 times less concentrated than provide quantitative pattern depletion. Furthermore, propose previously unidentified method based on strontium calcium to identify produced record. | element