Researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first observations of live, unaltered cells responding to magnetic fields.

“In the living cells of animals with magnetoreception, proteins called cryptochromes are thought to be the molecules that undergo this radical pair mechanism. And now, researchers at the University of Tokyo have observed cryptochromes responding to magnetic fields for the first time.”

The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.