Dispersion of magnetic susceptibility in a suspension of flexible ferromagnetic rods

Abstract The properties of suspensions of magnetosomes extracted from magnetotactic bacteria are investigated. By using dynamic light scattering and measuring the dispersion of magnetic susceptibility it is shown that sonicated samples with broken magnetosome chains have qualitatively different behavior in comparison with native samples. This is explained by the presence of flexible chains of magnetosomes in non-sonicated samples which have the qualitative features of magnetic susceptibility predicted by the model of flexible magnetic rods.