Beyond #TheTadpoleExperiment, we aim to find a mechanistic explanation of how magnetic fields affect biology, to learn how to deterministically, not haphazardly, electromagnetically tweak cellular processes leading to disease prevention and reversal.

Dive deeper:
www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

This is to say that we do not yet know what results we will observe.

Will we reproduce our collaborators' results that tadpoles are deformed at a super high rate? Will we find something completely different?

Join us in this open-science discovery journey at thetadpoleexperiment.org!

Previous to #TheTadpoleExperiment, we had never worked with tadpoles or with such a strong hypomagnetic chamber! Our chamber shields Earth's field by orders of magnitude, and we made a research visit to the National Xenopus Resource at @mblscience.bsky.social to make sure we got the biology right.

Thus, we decided to join forces to perform a limited time, "pop-up" experiment that might engage not only scientists, but the general public, to think about the effects of weak magnetic fields in biology.

Enter @LeverageRes, an organization that identifies and studies scientific fields that are currently blocked. Having studied the history of many such "once blocked fields", they suggested that public replications of key experiments might turn skepticism into enlightened curiosity.

Whatever the biological mechanism, it was crystal clear that tadpoles were "sensing" (the absence of) Earth's tiny magnetic field, in a big way.

And many times,people "finally got" what we were talking about when we shared(with appropriate credit and permission) the results of our collaborators in Germany (Peter Fierlinger @TU_Muenchen and Dima Budker
@uni_mainz)showing super high rates of deformed tadpoles raised in a hypomagnetic chamber.

Tadpoles and zebrafish are relatively easy to work with: they don't require to be fed for many days; they do not require the temperature, gas and environment control of an "incubator" (which is where cell cultures must be maintained).

And they're cute!!!

These frogs are a very well known “model organism” in biology for the study, among other things, of vertebrate embryogenesis.

If you’re a human or a toad of another species that not Xenopus laevis, you can continue to follow our daily lab activities in the Lab Book at thetadpoleexperiment.org!

On Wed we will “squeeze” Fifi and Veronika for eggs, and externally fertilize such eggs with sperm from the testes.

Our species of frogs is the African clawed frog, or Xenopus laevis (thanks to @wikipedia.bsky.social, we now know that Xenopus means “strange foot” and laevis means “smooth”).

With the experimental results of #TheTadpoleExperiment visible to both scientists and the public, it may become clearer whether effects from weak magnetic fields are real, even before a clear causal mechanism is established.

Read more in our @LinkedIn post:
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The result has been uncertainty in the scientific community, with some researchers unwilling to admit the existence of weak magnetic field effects before a causal mechanism can be established.

Stay tuned to find out how we handled this game of chamber Tetris :)

Now inside the lab, the chamber continues to amaze Tadgeneer Alessandro Lodesani and Tadpoler-in-chief @claricedaiello.bsky.social as a wonderful feat of engineering!

The chamber arrived in a package weighing slightly more than half a ton. The weigh comes from layers and layers of a particular type of material called "mu-metal".

The delivery of the chamber went well, but not without a slight complication: You're going to need a bigger boat, ooops no, door!

🚀🌌Finally, Phase 3 (July) takes us to Mars—figuratively! We'll simulate Mars' 1 uT magnetic field to study tadpole growth. Understanding life in weaker magnetic fields is crucial for future space exploration. What will we learn about potential life beyond Earth? Follow along!

🌍Phase 2 (June) shifts to a magnetic field of 50 uT (microtesla), mirroring Earth’s. Observing tadpoles in this setting helps validate that the results come from the chamber’s magnetic field conditions only, ensuring a control condition. It’s all about building a solid foundation for science.