{"id":2438,"date":"2021-06-24T13:35:45","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T03:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cognav.net\/?p=2438"},"modified":"2021-06-24T13:35:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T03:35:45","slug":"how-animals-sense-earths-magnetic-field-and-use-it-as-a-compass-to-determine-their-spatial-orientation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/?p=2438","title":{"rendered":"How animals sense Earth\u2019s magnetic field and use it as a compass to determine their spatial orientation?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Xu, J., Jarocha, L.E., Zollitsch, T. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-021-03618-9\"><strong>Magnetic sensitivity of cryptochrome 4 from a migratory songbird<\/strong><\/a>. Nature 594, 535\u2013540 (2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-03618-9<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Abstract<br \/>\n&#8220;<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Night-migratory songbirds are remarkably proficient navigators<\/span>1. Flying alone and often over great distances, they use various directional cues including, crucially, a <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">light-dependent magnetic compass<\/span>2,3. The mechanism of this compass has been suggested to rely on the quantum spin dynamics of photoinduced radical pairs in cryptochrome flavoproteins located in the retinas of the birds4,5,6,7. <strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Here we show that the photochemistry of cryptochrome 4 (CRY4) from the night-migratory European robin (Erithacus rubecula) is magnetically sensitive in vitro, and more so than CRY4 from two non-migratory bird species, chicken (Gallus gallus) and pigeon (Columba livia)<\/span><\/strong>. Site-specific mutations of ErCRY4 reveal the roles of four successive flavin\u2013tryptophan radical pairs in generating magnetic field effects and in stabilizing potential signalling states in a way that could<strong><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> enable sensing and signalling functions to be independently optimized in night-migratory birds<\/span><\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Xu, J., Jarocha, L.E., Zollitsch, T. et al. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-021-03618-9\"><strong>Magnetic sensitivity of cryptochrome 4 from a migratory songbird<\/strong><\/a>. Nature 594, 535\u2013540 (2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-03618-9<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">NEWS AND VIEWS<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Eric J. Warrant. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-021-01596-6\">Unravelling the enigma of bird magnetoreception<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Xu, J., Jarocha, L.E., Zollitsch, T. et al. Magnetic sensitivity of cryptochrome 4 from a migratory songbird. Nature 594, 535\u2013540 (2021). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-021-03618-9 Abstract &#8220;Night-migratory songbirds are remarkably proficient navigators1. Flying alone and often over great distances, they use various directional cues including, crucially, a light-dependent magnetic compass2,3. The mechanism of this compass has been suggested [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,96,468],"tags":[907],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2439,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/2439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/braininspirednavigation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}