Ph.D. LIN Wei and his teacher PAN Yongxin newly find a watermelon-shaped magnetotactic bacterium (designated MWB-1) from Lake Beihai in Beijing, China.

Considering its population densities in sediment and its high numbers of magnetosomes, MWB-1 was estimated to account for more than 10% of the natural remanent magnetization of the surface sediment. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that MTB in the phylum Nitrospirae are more diverse than previously realized and can make important contributions to the sedimentary magnetization in particular environments.

Their study is published in Applied and Envionmental Microbiology and become a cover story of the issure.