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Nature Research Journals You are receiving this press release because you have registered to do so at the Nature Publishing Group press site. In registering to receive these press releases, you have agreed to the terms and conditions EMBARGO LONDON NEW YORK Monday 16 November 2015 16:00 (GMT) Monday 16 November 2015 11:00 (EST) TOKYO SYDNEY Tuesday 17 November 2015 01:00 (JST) Tuesday 17 November 2015 03:00 (AEDT) Wire services’ stories must always carry the embargo time at the head of each item, and may not be sent out more than 24 hours before that time. Solely for the purpose of soliciting informed comment on Nature Publishing Group papers, you may show relevant parts of this document, and the papers to which it refers, to independent specialists – but you must ensure in advance that they understand and accept Nature Publishing Group’s embargo conditions. PRESS RELEASES This press release is copyright Nature Publishing Group. Its use is granted only for journalists and news media receiving it directly from Nature Publishing Group. Full terms and conditions can be found here. The best contacts for stories will always be the authors, but the editor who handled a paper may be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Please get in touch with Nature Publishing Group's press contacts as listed below with any editorial enquiry. We take great care not to hype the papers mentioned on our press releases. If you ever consider that a story has been hyped, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected], citing the specific example. NATURE MATERIALS [1] Protein complex found to behave like a magnetic compass A protein complex that orients itself in the direction of a magnetic field and whose genes are present in many animal species is identified in a study published online this week in Nature Materials. The protein complex may underlie the ability of some animals to sense magnetic fields, and its properties could open up a broad range of applications where magnetic fields are used to modulate biological processes. Animals of many species are able to sense the direction, intensity or inclination of the Earth’s magnetic field, and use this information as navigational cues. Although several biochemical models exist to explain such ability, much remains unknown about the underlying biological machinery that makes it possible. By screening the genome of fruit flies on the basis of rational biological assumptions, Can Xie and colleagues identified a polymer-like protein (which they named MagR) that couples with units of a light-sensitive cryptochrome protein (Cry) and spontaneously aligns in the direction of external magnetic fields. They also show through biochemical and biophysical methods that the MagR/Cry complex is stable in the retina of pigeons and can also form in butterfly, rat, whale and human cells. The authors note that the mechanism by which the MagR/Cry complex is able to sense magnetic fields and whether MagR/Cry is involved in animal magnetosensing remain unknown. Yet the discovery of such a compass-like protein complex could give rise to a broad range of new approaches for the magnetic-field-induced manipulation of macromolecules and even cell behaviour. ARTICLE DETAILS DOI: 10.1038/nmat4484 Corresponding Author: Can Xie Peking University, Beijing, China Email: [email protected] Tel: +86 18600081469 Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends): http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nmat4484