Evidence for a copper-dependent iron transport system in the marine, magnetotactic bacterium strain MV-1.

Cells of the magnetotactic marine vibrio, strain MV-1, produce magnetite-containing magnetosomes when grown anaerobically or microaerobically. Stable, spontaneous, non-magnetotactic mutants were regularly observed when cells of MV-1 were cultured on solid media incubated under anaerobic or microaerobic conditions. Randomly amplified polymorphic DNA analysis showed that these mutants are not all genetically identical.