Molecular Bioengineering of Magnetosomes for Biotechnological Applications

Organisms produce inorganic/organic composite materials, called biominerals, show amazing structures and exhibit excellent physical/chemical properties that often outperform artificial materials. From the basic studies on magnetotactic bacteria and their magnetosome formation mechanisms, methods for functional design of magnetosomes and magnetotactic bacterial cells were established through molecular bioengineering. This chapter introduces recent progress on the basic studies of magnetosome formation mechanism and the design of functional magnetic particles and their applications to biotechnology based on their unique properties. Moreover, the results obtained from these fundamental studies allow us to develop novel molecular constructs on the magnetosome surface. The constructed functional magnetosomes generated by the molecular bioengineering techniques are used for various biotechnological applications.