UC Irvine

While migratory birds have long been known to use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation, the precise biophysical mechanism behind this magnetic sense remains unconfirmed. A leading theory of magnetoreception suggests a chemical compass model with a yet undetermined molecular reaction site and unknown magnetically sensitive reactants. The cryptochrome photoreceptor has emerged as a promising candidate site. This investigation numerically models the first order kinetics of cryptochrome mediated photoreception, in order to evaluate its ability to function as a magnetic sensor and transduce orientation information along a neural pathway. A signal-to-noise ratio is defined to quantify the threshold for the functioning of a cryptochrome-based chemical compass. The model suggests that a flavin-superoxide radical pair in cryptochrome functions as the chemical reactants for magnetoreception. Such a cryptochrome-based signal transduction model reasonably predicts the general light intensity and wavelength effects that have been experimentally observed in migratory birds.