A novel colorimetric technique for estimating iron in magnetosomes of magnetotactic bacteria based on linear...

Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) use iron from their habitat to create magnetosomes, a unique organelle required for magnetotaxis. Due to a lack of cost-effective assay methods for estimating iron in magnetosomes, research on MTB and iron-rich magnetosomes is limited. A systemized assay was established in this study to quantify iron in MTB using ferric citrate colorimetric estimation. With a statistically significant R² value of 0.9935, the iron concentration range and wavelength for iron estimation were optimized using linear regression. This colorimetric approach and the inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) exhibited an excellent correlation R² value of 0.961 in the validatory correlative study of the iron concentration in the isolated magnetotactic bacterial strains. In large-scale screening studies, this less-expensive strategy could be advantageous.