Nitrogen Fixing Cyanobacteria: Future Prospect

By A. Issa, M. H. Abd‐Alla, T. Ohyama. 2014

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Cyanobacteria are often called "blue-green algae", this name is convenient for talking about organisms in water that make their own food, but does not reflect any relationship between the cyanobacteria and other organisms called algae. Cyanobacteria are relatives to bacteria, not eukaryotes, and it is only the chloroplast in eukaryotic algae to which cya‐ nobacteria are related. Some cyanobacteria are aquatic and photosynthetic, that is, they live in water, and can manufacture their own food. They are quite small and usually uni‐ cellular, though they often grow in colonies large enough to see. In fact, it may surprise you then to know that the cyanobacteria are still around; they are one of the largest and most important groups of bacteria on earth (Berry et al, 2008). The great contribution of cyanobacteria is the origin of plants chloroplast with which plants make food for them‐ selves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells. Sometime in the late Proterozoic or in the early Cambrian, cyanobacteria began to take up residence within certain eukaryote cells, making food for the eukaryote host in return for a home. This event is known as endosymbiosis, and is also the origin of eukaryotic mitochondrion (Is‐ sa et al., 2002). Majority of cyanobacteria are aerobic photoautotrophs, their life processes require only water, carbon dioxide, inorganic substances and light. Photosynthesis is their principal mode of energy metabolism. In the natural environment, however, it is known that some species are able to survive long periods in complete darkness. Furthermore, cer‐ tain cyanobacteria show a distinct ability for heterotrophic nutrition (Fay, 1965). Cyano‐ bacteria might be the first plants to colonies bare areas of rock and soil. Adaptations, such as ultraviolet absorbing sheath pigments, increase their fitness in the relatively exposed land environment. Many species are capable of living in soil and other terrestrial habi‐ tats, where they are important in the functional processes of ecosystems and cycling of nutrient elements (Whitton, 1992). The prominent habitats of cyanobacteria are limnic and

Subfields: Ecology, Molecular Biology, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

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