Cryptochrome and the avian "compass"
Humans have long been fascinated by the mystery of the annual migration of birds. Over the past 50 years, science has shown that migratory birds, along with a wide variety of other living organisms, can sense the earth's magnetic field and exploit it in orientation behavior. Despite decades of study, however, the physical basis of birds' magnetic compass remained an open question. Recent experiments seem to now validate a compass mechanism discovered at the University of Illinois.
Researchers in the Department of Physics and the Beckman Institute, led by Professor Klaus Schulten, made a stunning breakthrough in 2000, when they first proposed that a receptor protein, called cryptochrome, that is present in birds' eyes allow them to actually "see" the geomagnetic field.
Recently, Physics graduate student Danielle Chandler and collaborator Ilia Solov'yov (Johann Wolfgang Goethe University) have shown how a vision-based, radical-pair mechanism based on cryptochrome-1 explains several of the unique characteristics of the avian compass. Since 2000, many behavioral and physiological experiments with birds confirmed in further detail the cryptochrome bird compass.
This work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (MCB02-34938) and the National Institutes of Health (P41-RR05969). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agencies.