Part:BBa_K3338000

Iron transporter MagA from Magnetospirillum magneticum

Usage and Biology

MagA is a transmembrane iron transporter originating from the aquatic magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum magnetotacticum. In the original host the protein is involved in the formation of intracellular magnetic particles of magnetite (Fe₃O₄) (Nakamura et al. 1995, Uebe et al. 2012). These particles are the core components of magnetosomes in aquatic magnetotactic bacteria allowing them to passively align and swim along the earth's magnetic field lines (Lower and Bazylinski 2013). When expressed in procaryotic or eukaryotic cells it leads to the accumulation of intracellular iron (Goldhawk et al. 2009, Zurkiya et al. 2008). In the last years its capability as a reporter gene in mammalian cells using the non-invasive imaging technique magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was recognized (Goldhawk et al. 2009, Zurkiya et al. 2008). It was shown that cells expressing MagA that are transplanted in animals can be detected using MRI without being incubated with iron supplement prior to transplantation (Zurkiya et al. 2008, Rohani 2014). However, not all cells types are suitable for MagA expression because it sometimes induces strong cytotoxic effects (Pereira 2016). In the HeLa cell system, we used in our study, MagA was properly expressed.

Sequence and Features

Assembly Compatibility:

• 10
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[10]
• 12
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[12]
• 21
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[21]
• 23
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[23]
• 25
  COMPATIBLE WITH RFC[25]
• 1000
  INCOMPATIBLE WITH RFC[1000]

  Illegal BsaI site found at 1182
  Illegal BsaI.rc site found at 514
  Illegal BsaI.rc site found at 1063
  Illegal SapI site found at 204
  

References:

1. Nakamura, C., Burgess, J. G., Sode, K., & Matsunaga, T. (1995). An iron-regulated gene, magA, encoding an iron transport protein of Magnetospirillum sp. strain AMB-1. The Journal of biological chemistry, 270(47), 28392–28396.
2. Uebe, R., Henn, V., & Schüler, D. (2012). The MagA protein of Magnetospirilla is not involved in bacterial magnetite biomineralization. Journal of bacteriology, 194(5), 1018–1023.
3. Lower, B. H., & Bazylinski, D. A. (2013). The bacterial magnetosome: a unique prokaryotic organelle. Journal of molecular microbiology and biotechnology, 23(1-2), 63–80.
4. Goldhawk, D. E., Lemaire, C., McCreary, C. R., McGirr, R., Dhanvantari, S., Thompson, R. T., Figueredo, R., Koropatnick, J., Foster, P., & Prato, F. S. (2009). Magnetic resonance imaging of cells overexpressing MagA, an endogenous contrast agent for live cell imaging. Molecular imaging, 8(3), 129–139.
5. Zurkiya, O., Chan, A. W., & Hu, X. (2008). MagA is sufficient for producing magnetic nanoparticles in mammalian cells, making it an MRI reporter. Magnetic resonance in medicine, 59(6), 1225–1231.
6. Rohani, R., Figueredo, R., Bureau, Y., Koropatnick, J., Foster, P., Thompson, R. T., Prato, F. S., & Goldhawk, D. E. (2014). Imaging tumor growth non-invasively using expression of MagA or modified ferritin subunits to augment intracellular contrast for repetitive MRI. Molecular imaging and biology, 16(1), 63–73.
7. Pereira, S. M., Williams, S. R., Murray, P., & Taylor, A. (2016). MS-1 magA: Revisiting Its Efficacy as a Reporter Gene for MRI. Molecular imaging, 15, 1536012116641533.