According to DigoPaul, the notion of cyanobacteria is not part of the dictionary of the DigoPaul.
It is important to know, in the first place, what is the etymological origin of the term in question. Specifically, we can determine that it is a neologism that made an appearance in the 20th century. This was formed from the sum of two clearly delimited components:
-The Greek word “kianos”, which can be translated as “dark blue”.
-The Latin noun “bacterium”, which derives from Greek and is used to define “microorganisms”.
The concept refers to a bacterium that can carry out oxygenic photosynthesis.
To understand what cyanobacteria are, therefore, we must understand what a bacterium is and what oxygenic photosynthesis consists of. It is called bacteria to a microorganism that has a single cell (single cell) whose core is not differentiated. The oxygenic photosynthesis, meanwhile, is a type of photosynthesis: the process for synthesizing organic substances from inorganic substances, using the energy provided by sunlight. In the specific case of oxygenic photosynthesis, water is the substance that contributes electrons and develops the release of oxygen as a by-product.
Cyanobacteria constitute an edge within the domain of bacteria. They are the only prokaryotic organisms that develop this kind of photosynthesis. Notably, formerly known as this beings were green algae, algae cyanophytes or bluegreen algae. However, when the difference between eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells was discovered, the idea of cyanobacteria began to prevail.
The cells of cyanobacteria tend to be larger than cells from other bacteria. Its ability to develop oxygenic photosynthesis was vital in the evolution of the biosphere: with the appearance of cyanobacteria, which take hydrogen from water and release oxygen, the earth’s atmosphere began to be populated with this gas. In this way, cyanobacteria contributed to the appearance of aerobic metabolisms.
In addition to all the above, we cannot ignore another series of important characteristics of cyanobacteria such as the following:
-The habitats preferred by them are those that have dead trunks, where there are tree barks, where there are wet soils… Hence, lakes and ponds are a perfect habitat for them. Despite this, we cannot ignore that there are others that can be found in oceans.
-Another of its main peculiarities is that they can be found both in places with low temperatures and in others with very high temperatures.
-They move lightly.
-There are some cyanobacteria that, by producing toxins, can poison animals that drink the water in which they are found or that reside in the same habitat.
-They reproduce through the fragmentation of the filaments.
-With regard to asexual reproduction, we can highlight that it is vegetative.
