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Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,10,6]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are generally thought to navigate as individual cells by using intracellular magnetosome chains that provide a stable magnetic moment for orientation along magnetic field lines. Whether nonclassical magnetosome geometries and particle-scale magnetic states can support robust chain-level magnetic function, and potentially mediate interactions between cells, remains unresolved. Here, to we report a unicellular magnetotactic bacterium, strain WYHV-1, that biomineralizes comparatively large prismatic magnetite magnetosomes with distinctive dimples at both crystal ends and organizes them into a single tightly packed intracellular chain. Off-axis electron holography reveals that individual dimple-ended particles commonly exhibit single-vortex behavior rather than a canonical uniformly magnetized single-domain (SD) state. Micromagnetic simulations indicate a size-dependent transition from SD to single-vortex behavior in dimple-ended particles and that tight intrachain coupling suppresses particle-scale nonuniformity, producing a predominantly SD-like magnetization within the chain and a strong chain-parallel remanent moment. Further simulations indicate that chain-generated stray fields concentrated at chain ends can generate intercellular magnetic attraction strong enough to promote head-to-tail linking between neighboring cells over subcellular distances. These results provide a physical explanation for field-dependent multicell-like assemblies observed in hanging-drop experiments and indicate that magnetic performance in WYHV-1 is governed primarily by chain-level organization rather than by the magnetic state of idealized isolated particles. Our findings expand the known structural and magnetic diversity of biogenic magnetite and reveal a cross-scale mechanism by which magnetosome chains support cellular orientation, and under field-aligned experimental conditions, mediate intercellular magnetic organization.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.2615054123","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]],"date-time":"2026-09-29T16:18:26Z","timestamp":1790698706000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1073\/pnas.cm10313","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["Chain organization of dimple-ended magnetite magnetosomes supports field-dependent cell linking in unicellular magnetotactic bacteria"],"prefix":"10.1073","volume":"123","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1622-6170","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jinhua","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"id":[{"id":"https:\/\/ror.org\/034t30j35","id-type":"ROR","asserted-by":"publisher"}],"name":"Key Laboratory of 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H. Li P. Y. Liu Uncultured Alphaproteobacteria bacterium clone WYHV-1 16S ribosomal RNA gene partial sequence. GenBank. https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/nuccore\/PP905258. 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