The living cells of all organisms contain a cytoskeleton that stabilizes their internal structure and external shape. This also applies to magnetotactic bacteria. They produce magnetic nanoparticles which are concatenated into intracellular chains and enable them to orient themselves to the Earth's magnetic field. Microbiologists at the University of Bayreuth have now discovered a protein in the cytoskeleton of these bacteria which plays a central role in these structuring processes. The protein CcfM influences both the formation of the cellular "compass needles" and the helical shape of the bacteria. The researchers have published their discovery in the journal PNAS.