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Cyanobacteria (Alga Biru)

BIOLOGI FMIPA UNM

Introduction to the Cyanobacteria Architects of earth's atmosphere

Cyanobacteria are aquatic and photosynthetic, that is, they live in the water, and can manufacture their own food. Because they are bacteria, they are quite small and usually unicellular, though they often grow in colonies large enough to see. They have the distinction of being the oldest known fossils, more than 3.5 billion years old, 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.

was generated by numerous cyanobacteria during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eras. Before that time, the atmosphere had a very different chemistry, unsuitable for life as we know it today.

Many Proterozoic oil deposits are attributed to the activity of cyanobacteria. They are also important providers of nitrogen fertilizer in the cultivation of rice and beans. The cyanobacteria have also been tremendously important in shaping the course of evolution and ecological change throughout earth's history. The oxygen atmosphere that we depend on

The other great contribution of the cyanobacteria is the origin of plants. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves 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 the eukaryotic mitochondrion. Because they are photosynthetic and aquatic, cyanobacteria are often called "blue-green algae". This name is convenient for talking about organisms in the water that make their own food, but does not reflect any relationship between the cyanobacteria and other organisms called algae. Cyanobacteria

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Cyanobacteria (Alga Biru)

BIOLOGI FMIPA UNM

Images of Nostoc and Oscillatoria provided by the University of Wisconsin Botanical Images Collection.

For more information about cyanobacteria on the web, visit Cyanosite, a webserver dedicated to cyanobacterial research. Information about the ecology of fresh-water cyanobacteria is available from the Soil and Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax. The Tree of Life has a preliminary page on the Cyanobacteria, with some very nice pictures.

Cyanobacteria: Fossil Record

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Cyanobacteria (Alga Biru)

BIOLOGI FMIPA UNM

The cyanobacteria have an extensive fossil record. The oldest known fossils, in fact, are cyanobacteria from Archaean rocks of western Australia, dated 3.5 billion years old. This may be somewhat surprising, since the oldest rocks are only a little older: 3.8 billion years old! Cyanobacteria are among the easiest microfossils to recognize. Morphologies in the group have remained much the same for billions of years, and they may leave chemical fossils behind as well, in the form of breakdown products from pigments. Small fossilized cyanobacteria have been extracted from Precambrian rock, and studied through the use of SEM and TEM (scanning and transmission electron microscopy). Many Proterozoic oil deposits are attributed to the activity of cyanobacteria, such as Gloeocapsomorpha. Small concentrically layered structures called pisolites are also the result of fossilized bacteria. Cyanobacteria are otherwise rarely preserved in rocks other than chert, though some possible blue-green bacteria have been recovered from shale. At right is a layered stromatolite, produced by the activity of ancient cyanobacteria. The layers were produced as calcium carbonate precipitated over the growing mat of bacterial filaments; photosynthesis in the bacteria depleted carbon dioxide in the surrounding water, initiating the

precipitation. The minerals, along with grains of sediment precipitating from the water, were then trapped within the sticky layer of mucilage that surrounds the bacterial colonies, which then continued to grow upwards through the sediment to form a new layer. As this process occured over and over again, the layers of sediment were created. This process still occurs today; Shark Bay in western Australia is well known for the stromatolite "turfs" rising along its beaches. In some cases, the stromatolites were infiltrated with a mineral-rich solution which fossilized the bacteria along with the layers, but more often only the layers are preserved. The oldest stromatolites date to the Early Archaean, and they became abundant by the end of the Archaean. In the Proterozoic, stromatolites were widespread on earth, and were ecologically important as the first reefs. By the close of the Proterozoic, the abundance of stromatolites decreased markedly, though cyanobacteria continued to leave a fossil record, such as Langiella and Kidstoniella known from the Lower Devonian Rhynie chert. The cyanobacteria have also been tremendously important in shaping the course of evolution and ecological change throughout earth's history. The oxygen atmosphere that we depend on was generated by numerous cyanobacteria photosynthesizing during the Archaean

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Cyanobacteria (Alga Biru)

BIOLOGI FMIPA UNM

and Proterozoic Era. Before that time, the atmosphere had a very different

chemistry, unsuitable for life as we know it today.

Cyanobacteria: More on Morphology

Cyanobacteria are among the easiest microfossils to recognize. They are larger than other bacteria, and morphologies in the group have remained much the same for billions of years. Like other bacteria, cyanobacteria have no nucleus or internal membrane systems. In many species, however, the external membrane has been folded to increase total surface area. The "packets" created in the cell membrane by these foldings are the surfaces across which the chemical reactions of photosynthesis take place. All cyanobacteria are unicellular, though many grow in colonies or filaments, often surrounded by a gelatinous or mucilaginous sheath. Nostoc, pictured below at left, may produce spherical colonies as much as three or four centimeters in diameter. These are large enough to be mistaken for amphibian eggs. Fossilized cyanobacterial mounds are called stromatolites.

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Cyanobacteria (Alga Biru)

BIOLOGI FMIPA UNM

Fischerella, Prochloron, Spirulina (copied from Tree of Life Web Project)

Gloeocapsa (copied from Tree of Life Web Project)