Figure 2.

Representative examples of native and collapsed double‐stranded magnetosome chains, as well as looped chains, obtained from TEM micrographs. (a) Native, twisted double‐stranded chain of equant magnetosomes produced by Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense. Notice the magnetosome size tapering at both ends. (b) Native double‐stranded chain of prismatic magnetosomes (Lefèvre et al., 2011). Notice the staggered magnetosome arrangement. (c) Top: kinked single‐stranded chain of prismatic magnetosomes (Shcherbakov et al., 1997). Bottom: complete folding of a single‐stranded chain around a kink point. Notice the side‐by‐side arrangement of magnetosomes, and one‐sided tapering of magnetosome size. (d) Two examples of rings obtained from magnetophoresis of magnetosome chains extracted from cultures of M. magnetotacticum (Philipse & Maas, 2002).