Cyanobacteria, the only known prokaryotes that perform oxygen-evolving photosynthesis, are receiving strong attention in basic and applied research. In using solar energy, water, CO2 and mineral salts to produce a large amount of biomass for the food chain, cyanobacteria constitute the first biological barrier against the entry of toxics into the food chain. In addition, cyanobacteria have the ...

Restoring biological soil crusts (biocrusts) in degraded drylands can contribute to recovery of ecosystem functions that have global implications, including erosion resistance and nutrient cycling. To examine techniques for restoring biocrusts, we conducted a replicated, factorial experiment on recently abandoned road surfaces by applying biocrust inoculation (salvaged and stored dry for two ye...

Benthic communities below the photic zone depend for food on allochthonous organic matter derived from seasonal phytoplankton blooms. In the Baltic Sea, the spring diatom bloom is considered the most important input of organic matter, whereas the contribution of the summer bloom dominated by diazotrophic cyanobacteria is less understood. The possible increase in cyanobacteria blooms as a conseq...

It is commonly accepted that summer cyanobacterial blooms cannot be efficiently utilized by grazers due to low nutritional quality and production of toxins; however the evidence for such effects in situ is often contradictory. Using field and experimental observations on Baltic copepods and bloom-forming diazotrophic filamentous cyanobacteria, we show that cyanobacteria may in fact support zoop...

Here, we report the annotated draft genome sequences of nine different cyanobacteria, which were originally collected from different habitats, including hot springs, terrestrial, freshwater, and marine environments, and cover four of the five morphological subsections of cyanobacteria.

2.4 Cyanobacterial Fossils.................................................. 22 2.4.1 Filamentous Cyanobacteria ............................................ 22 2.4.1.1 Oscillatoriaceae .............................................................. 22 2.4.1.2 Nostocaceae .................................................................... 24 2.4.2 Coccoid and Ellipsoid Cyanobacteria ...............

Natural products are a functionally diverse class of biochemically synthesized compounds, which include antibiotics, toxins, and siderophores. In this paper, we describe both the detection of natural product activities and the sequence identification of gene fragments from two molecular systems that have previously been implicated in natural product production, i.e., nonribosomal peptide synthe...

Cyanobacteria with true branching are classified in Subsection V (formerly order Stigonematales) in the phylum CYANOBACTERIA: They exhibit a high degree of morphological complexity and are known from particular biotopes. Only a few stigonematalean morphotypes have been cultured, and therefore the high variability of morphotypes found in nature is under-represented in culture. Axenic cultures of...

The long-term record of cyanobacteria abundance in Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel, demonstrates changes in cyanobacteria abundance and composition in the last five decades. New invasive species of the order Nostocales (Aphanizomenon ovalisporum and Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii) became part of the annual phytoplankton assemblage during summer-autumn. Concomitantly, bloom events of Micr...

Cyanobacteria contamination of water has become a growing public health problem worldwide. Microcystis aeruginosa is one of the most common toxic cyanobacteria. It is capable of producing microcystins, a group of cyclic heptapeptide compounds with potent hepatotoxicity and tumor promotion activity. The present study investigated the effect of microcystic cyanobacteria on primary cultured rat he...