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. 2004 Dec 7;271(Suppl 6):S436–S439. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0209

Biogenic magnetite in the nematode caenorhabditis elegans.

Charles G Cranfield 1, Adam Dawe 1, Vassil Karloukovski 1, Rafal E Dunin-Borkowski 1, David de Pomerai 1, Jon Dobson 1
PMCID: PMC1810097  PMID: 15801597

Abstract

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is widely used as a model system in biological research. Recently, examination of the production of heat-shock proteins in this organism in response to mobile phone-type electromagnetic field exposure produced the most robust demonstration to date of a non-thermal, deleterious biological effect. Though these results appear to be a sound demonstration of non-thermal bioeffects, to our knowledge, no mechanism has been proposed to explain them. We show, apparently for the first time, that biogenic magnetite, a ferrimagnetic iron oxide, is present in C. elegans. Its presence may have confounding effects on experiments involving electromagnetic fields as well as implications for the use of this nematode as a model system for iron biomineralization in multi-cellular organisms.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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