DrSc. Vitalii Zablotskii is a senior researcher at the Institute of Physics Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, working in magnetism and biophysics. His main research activities focus on the study of magnetic field effects on living organisms, targeted magnetic drug and cell delivery as well as magnetic nanostructures and phase transitions.

Six gradients drive life on the Earth. Far from being uniform, the world consists of spatiotemporal patterns of substances and fields characterized by proper gradients. Cells development and motion are guided by the following gradients: a) gradient of the Earth's gravitational potential (gravity), b) temperature gradient, c) light intensity gradient, d) concentration gradient, e) gradient of the electric potential in cell membrane, and f) magnetic field gradient. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201800017

Cell in a gradient magnetic field. The cell is schematically shown above a magnetized cylinder. The arrows show directions of the magnetic gradient forces scattered in different places throughout a cell’s body.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201800017

 

Chirality selection for life. On the bottom: (a) homochiral molecules of the left-handed alanine, (b) DNA right-handed helix, (c) Left-Right (LR) –asymmetry of cell division, (d) right (typical) form of the snail Fruticicola lantzi which is more viable than the inverse form, (e) LR-asymmetry of human body and (f) left-right inversion in the human brain under influence of a magnetic field (see the text below). Importantly, all amino acids are present in all proteins only in the left configuration. It has been proposed that the amino acids (in particular, left-handed alanine)  chiral selection takes place in strong magnetic fields generated by neutron stars. https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1096/fba.2019-00045

 

Muscle myotubes in a gradient magnetic field. (A) Myoblasts and myotubes exhibit different morphology, with myotubes being multinucleated, elongated cells with increased mitochondrial mass. Myoblasts and myotubes were fixed, stained with MitoTracker Deep Red mitochondrial dye (red) and Hoechst 33342 nuclear stain (blue), and analyzed by using fluorescence microscopy. Original magnification 400×. (B) Experimental setup for cell treatment with alternating (alt) magnetic field. Cells were positioned beneath the alt-magnetic field generator and exposed to alt-magnetic fields of different amplitudes consisting of two overlaying components: translational (with varying inversion time) and rotational (with varying rotational frequencies). B(t, ω) is the magnetic field induction as a function of time,  is the amplitude,  is the contribution of the translation movement of different inversion time and ωt is the contributing rotation frequency. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961218301170