Scientists of the Rome-based National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV) said on Tuesday they have identified a new type of bacterium that could be used to transport pharmaceuticals into diseased cells.

The scientists of the INGV laboratory of paleomagnetism identified a chain of pure magnetite crystals in a special bacterium called "Magnetobrivio blakemorei," which was found by a group of US researchers near the mouth of the river Neponset in eastern Massachusetts in the United States.

The organism, whose crystals measure between 20 and 50 nanometers each (over 10 times the diameter of the double helix in DNA,) belongs to the group of "magnetotactic bacteria" discovered early in the 1960s and containing crystals sensitive to the earth's magnetic field, the responsible for the INGV paleomagnetism research, Fabio Florindo, told Xinhua.

He said magnetotactic bacteria are organisms that develop membrane-encapsulated nano-particles known as "magnetosomes" which allow the bacteria to orient themselves along the earth's magnetic field lines in order to migrate to more favorable environments.

Magnetosomes contain the iron-oxygen composite, magnetite, which is also found in more complex organisms, such as honey bees, salmon and pigeons, and is presumed to play a fundamental role in navigation.

The new "magnetic" bacterium was analyzed in the Rome laboratory with both the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the most cutting-edge magnetic techniques including first order reversal curves (FORC), ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) and decomposition of saturation remanent magnetization (DAM), Florindo said.

One very important result, the scientist added, was that "the type of magnetic analysis we have done are not harmful to these organisms and therefore allow to study the properties of magnetosomes when they are still alive inside the cell differently from other studies carried out in the past on fossilized bacteria."

He noted that, being not pathogenic, this special bacteria work as an internal compass that could have important applications in several fields including medicine for the transportation of medical drugs directly into ailing cells.

"This latest discovery of the laboratory of paleomagnetism adds up to a series of other important findings about volcanic rocks of all origins, which have many potential applications in various fields," the INGV President Stefano Gresta told Xinhua.

Gresta wished that the public institute will build more international collaborations besides to the already existing ones, so as to become a reference point for the global scientific community.