Jun 22, 2011 10:00 GMT  ·  By

According to the conclusions of a new scientific study, it may be possible for humans to feel the planet's magnetic field, similarly to how animals such as birds and sea turtles do it. These results were derived from an innovative research effort.

In order to test whether this was true or not, experts simply took a protein that is commonly expressed in the retina of the human eye, and inserted it into the Drosophila fly. Once the “transplant” was completed, the fly became able to sense magnetic fields.

While previous investigations determined that humans don't have an innate magnetic sense, that is not to say that they never did. The ability to sense Earth's magnetic field is essential to the survival of thousands of species.

Birds would be unable to complete their migrations without the ability to sense where they are going. There are some species, such as the Arctic fern, that travel for thousands of kilometers non-stop. Without this magnetic compass, they would be lost.

The new investigation demonstrates once and for all that human sensory biology is not a fully-understood field of research, and that it deserves further studies. In the future, given the right researches, it may become possible to reawaken this ability in humans as well.

In many species, sensing magnetism is made possible by the light-sensitive chemical reactions that take place inside the eye, involving the flavoprotein cryptochrome (CRY), a special type of protein. In past works, CRY was found to allow Drosophila to sense magnetic fields.

But the researchers also wanted to test and see whether the human cryptochrome 2 protein (hCRY2) has a similar magnetic sensory ability or not. The tests were carried out by University of Massachusetts Medical School Higgins Family Professor of Neuroscience Steven Reppert, MD.

The expert is also the chair and a professor of neurobiology at the university. He and his team created a type of Drosophila that was genetically modified not to express CRY, but to express hCRY2 instead.

When subjecting the flies to the effects of a magnetic field generated by an electric coil, it was demonstrated that the insects could sense them, even if there was no light around, Daily Galaxy reports.

“Additional research on magneto sensitivity in humans at the behavioral level, with particular emphasis on the influence of magnetic field on visual function, rather than non-visual navigation, would be informative,” Reppert concludes.