The evolution of oxygenic photosynthesis in cyanobacteria nearly three billion years ago provided abundant reducing power and facilitated the elaboration of numerous oxygen-dependent reactions in our biosphere. Cyanobacteria contain an internal thylakoid membrane system, the site of photosynthesis, and a typical Gram-negative envelope membrane system. Like other organisms, the extracytoplasmic ...

Cyanobacteria are major primary producers in the polar and alpine regions contributing significantly to nitrogen and carbon cycles in the cryosphere. Recent advancements in environmental sequencing techniques have revealed great molecular diversity of microorganisms in cold environments. However, there are no comprehensive phylogenetic analyses including the entire known diversity of cyanobacte...

Heterocystous, planktonic cyanobacteria capable of fixing atmospheric N2 into available nitrogen (N) are common and critically important to nutrient cycling in many lakes, yet they are rarely observed in estuaries at salinities >10 ppt, even when strongly N limited. In a series of mesocosm experiments using water from Narragansett Bay (Rhode Island), we manipulated top-down (grazing) and bottom...

Chloroplast genome originates from the genome of ancestral cyanobacterial endosymbiont. The comparison of the genomes of cyanobacteria and plants has been made possible by the advance in genome sequencing. I report here current results of our computational efforts to compare the genomes of cyanobacteria and plants and to trace the process of evolution of cyanobacteria, chloroplasts and plants. ...

Cyanobacteria are the prokaryotes and the most primitive organism to evolve on the earth. They are autotrophs and perform oxygenic mode of photosynthesis. During the course of evolution cyanobacteria were exposed to extreme habitats and environmental conditions which developed an ability to synthesize an array of complex secondary metabolites in these cells. One such class of compounds is UVR p...

Bioinspired by diatoms, biomimetic silicification confers an artificial shell on cyanobacteria to alleviate photoinhibition; thus, the photosynthesis of the resulting cyanobacteria@SiO2 becomes more efficient under high light conditions.

oil pollutions are widespread environmental pollutants. most of the studies have been focused on the biodegradation of these pollutions. unfortunately, the information on the microflore of the polluted regions especially for microalgae is limited. in this research, we have focused on masjed soleiman; one of the most oil polluted cities in iran. soil and water samples were collected from differ...

The distribution of nitrogenase activity in the rice-soil system and the possible contribution of epiphytic cyanobacteria on rice plants and other macrophytes to this activity were studied in two locations in the rice fields of Valencia, Spain, in two consecutive crop seasons. The largest proportion of photodependent N(2) fixation was associated with the macrophyte Chara vulgaris in both years ...

Cyanobacterial and algal mass development, or blooms, have severe effects on freshwater and marine systems around the world. Many of these phototrophs produce a variety of potent toxins, contribute to oxygen depletion, and affect water quality in several ways. Coexisting antagonists, such as cyanolytic bacteria, hold the potential to suppress, or even terminate, such blooms, yet the nature of t...