Magnetic resonance control of spin-correlated radical pair dynamics in vivo | Nature

Subjects

- Biological fluorescence

- Biomedical engineering

- Quantum physics

Abstract

Magnetic fields can influence reactions involving spin-correlated radical pairs (SCRPs)1,2. This provides a mechanism by which both static and time-varying magnetic fields can affect living systems at the biomolecular level3. However, an engineered SCRP system conferring magnetic sensitivity to a non-native biochemical process in a multicellular organism has not yet been demonstrated. Here we demonstrate control of SCRP dynamics using magnetic resonance in a live transgenic animal. We show that the emission of various red fluorescent proteins (RFPs), in the presence of a flavin cofactor, can be modified by a combination of static and radiofrequency magnetic fields applied near the electron spin resonance frequency. This effect was measured at room temperature both in vitro and in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, genetically modified to express the RFP mScarlet4. These observations suggest that the magnetic field effects measured in RFP-flavin systems5 are due to quantum-correlated radical pairs with a coherence time larger than 4 ns. Our experiments demonstrate that radiofrequency magnetic fields can influence dynamics of reactions involving SCRPs in vivo, potentially enabling new methods for remotely controlling biomolecular processes, such as gene expression, and suggest broader potential for quantum tools in biology.

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Fig. 1: Modulation of fluorescence from RFPs in a fluorescent protein: flavin system using RF magnetic fields.

Fig. 2: RYDMR from an aqueous solution of purified mScarlet-I and FMN.

Fig. 3: Electron spin resonance.

Fig. 4: MFEs and RYDMR in C. elegans expressing mScarlet.

Data availability

The raw data supporting this study are available at Zenodo36 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15321800). The crystal structure of RFP mScarlet is available from the Protein Data Bank (PDB ID 5LK4; https://doi.org/10.2210/pdb5lk4/pdb).

Code availability

The custom codes used to analyse the data in this study are available at Zenodo36 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15321800).

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