Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Cyanobacteria may possess the ability to produce substances that could one day serve as anti-inflammatory agents and combat bacterial infections in humans. [255] Cyanobacteria's photosynthetic output of sugar and oxygen has been demonstrated to have therapeutic value in rats with heart attacks. [256]
Cyanobacteria are a large and diverse phylum of bacteria defined by their unique combination of pigments and their ability to perform oxygenic photosynthesis. [2] [3] Cyanobacteria often live in colonial aggregates that can take a multitude of forms. [3]
Photosynthesis (/ ˌ f oʊ t ə ˈ s ɪ n θ ə s ɪ s / FOH-tə-SINTH-ə-sis) [1] is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabolism.
In red light, this is replaced by blue colored phycocyanin, which absorbs red light better. This reversible process is known as complementary chromatic adaptation. It is the component of photosynthetic system of cyanobacteria, as a particle with which various structures are linked (i.e. thylakoid membrane, etc.). [citation needed]
All plants and all photosynthetic algae contain chloroplasts, which produce NADPH and ATP by the mechanisms described above. In essence, the same transmembrane structures are also found in cyanobacteria. Unlike plants and algae, cyanobacteria are prokaryotes.
Prochlorococcus is a genus of very small (0.6 μm) marine cyanobacteria with an unusual pigmentation (chlorophyll a2 and b2).These bacteria belong to the photosynthetic picoplankton and are probably the most abundant photosynthetic organism on Earth.
Cyanobacteria remain critical to marine ecosystems as primary producers in oceanic gyres, as agents of biological nitrogen fixation, and, in modified form, as the plastids of marine algae. [15] Modern photosynthesis in plants and most photosynthetic prokaryotes is oxygenic.
Oxygenic photosynthesis can be performed by plants and cyanobacteria; cyanobacteria are believed to be the progenitors of the photosystem-containing chloroplasts of eukaryotes. Photosynthetic bacteria that cannot produce oxygen have only one photosystem, which is similar to either PSI or PSII.