Determination of the magnetic moment and geometrical dimensions of the magnetotactic bacteria using an optical scattering method

摘要

We adapted an experimental technique for characterizing the magnetotactic bacteria and simplified it by transferring the burden to literal and numerical computation, which is an advantageous tradeoff. In a magnetic field the bacteria tend to orient their magnetic axes along the direction of the magnetic field, resulting in an anisotropic distribution of the orientation and, consequently, a significant change of the directional distribution of the scattering efficiency of light. We made a simple experimental arrangement for measuring the scattering efficiency of light by the bacteria in certain directions for various values of an external magnetic field applied to the bacteria. We inferred from the fitting of the experimental to the theoretical data the most probable values for the magnetic moment and the dimensions of the magnetotactic bacteria. In the experiments a wild-type Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense strain was used.