Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria /saɪˌænoʊbækˈtɪəriə/, also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum of bacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis and are the only photosynthetic prokaryotes able to produce oxygen. The name cyanobacteria comes from the color of the bacteria (Greek: κυανός, romanized: kyanós, lit. 'blue'). Cyanobacteria, which are prokaryotes, are also called 'blue-green algae', though the term algae in modern usage is restricted to eukaryotes. Cyanobacteria appear to have originated in freshwater or a terrestrial environment. Unlike heterotrophic prokaryotes, cyanobacteria have internal membranes. These are flattened sacs called thylakoids where photosynthesis is performed. Phototrophic eukaryotes perform photosynthesis by plastids that may have their ancestry in cyanobacteria, acquired long ago via a process called endosymbiosis. These endosymbiotic cyanobacteria in eukaryotes may have evolved or differentiated into specialized organelles such as chloroplasts, etioplasts and leucoplasts. By producing and releasing oxygen (as a byproduct of photosynthesis), cyanobacteria are thought to have converted the early oxygen-poor, reducing atmosphere into an oxidizing one, causing the Great Oxygenation Event and the 'rusting of the Earth', which dramatically changed the composition of the Earth's life forms and led to the near-extinction of anaerobic organisms. Cyanobacteria are a group of photosynthetic bacteria, some of which are nitrogen-fixing, that live in a wide variety of moist soils and water either freely or in a symbiotic relationship with plants or lichen-forming fungi (as in the lichen genus Peltigera). They range from unicellular to filamentous and include colonial species. Colonies may form filaments, sheets, or even hollow spheres. Some filamentous species can differentiate into several different cell types: vegetative cells – the normal, photosynthetic cells that are formed under favorable growing conditions; akinetes – climate-resistant spores that may form when environmental conditions become harsh; and thick-walled heterocysts – which contain the enzyme nitrogenase, vital for nitrogen fixation in an anaerobic environment due to its sensitivity to oxygen. Some cyanobacteria can fix atmospheric nitrogen in anaerobic conditions by means of specialized cells called heterocysts. Heterocysts may also form under the appropriate environmental conditions (anoxic) when fixed nitrogen is scarce. Heterocyst-forming species are specialized for nitrogen fixation and are able to fix nitrogen gas into ammonia (NH3), nitrites (NO−2) or nitrates (NO−3), which can be absorbed by plants and converted to protein and nucleic acids (atmospheric nitrogen is not bioavailable to plants, except for those having endosymbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria, especially the Fabaceae family, among others). Free-living cyanobacteria are present in the water of rice paddies, and cyanobacteria can be found growing as epiphytes on the surfaces of the green alga, Chara, where they may fix nitrogen. Cyanobacteria such as Anabaena (a symbiont of the aquatic fern Azolla) can provide rice plantations with biofertilizer. Many cyanobacteria form motile filaments of cells, called hormogonia, that travel away from the main biomass to bud and form new colonies elsewhere. The cells in a hormogonium are often thinner than in the vegetative state, and the cells on either end of the motile chain may be tapered. To break away from the parent colony, a hormogonium often must tear apart a weaker cell in a filament, called a necridium.