Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 111, Issue 30, Pages 10933-10938Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1403510111
Keywords
calcification; amorphous calcium carbonate; polyphosphate
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council under European Community [307110]
- ERC CALCYAN
- Institut Pasteur
- SEM facility at L'Institut de Mineralogie, de Physique des Materiaux et de Cosmochimie (IMPMC)
- Region Ile de France [SESAME 2006 I-07-593/R]
- Advanced Light Source Molecular Environmental Science
- Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences and Materials Sciences Division, US Department of Energy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- European Research Council (ERC) [307110] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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Cyanobacteria have played a significant role in the formation of past and modern carbonate deposits at the surface of the Earth using a biomineralization process that has been almost systematically considered induced and extracellular. Recently, a deep-branching cyanobacterial species, Candidatus Gloeomargarita lithophora, was reported to form intracellular amorphous Ca-rich carbonates. However, the significance and diversity of the cyanobacteria in which intracellular biomineralization occurs remain unknown. Here, we searched for intracellular Cacarbonate inclusions in 68 cyanobacterial strains distributed throughout the phylogenetic tree of cyanobacteria. We discovered that diverse unicellular cyanobacterial taxa form intracellular amorphous Ca-carbonates with at least two different distribution patterns, suggesting the existence of at least two distinct mechanisms of biomineralization: (i) one with Ca-carbonate inclusions scattered within the cell cytoplasm such as in Ca. G. lithophora, and(ii) another one observed in strains belonging to the Thermosynechococcus elongatus BP-1 lineage, in which Ca-carbonate inclusions lie at the cell poles. This pattern seems to be linked with the nucleation of the inclusions at the septum of the cells, showing an intricate and original connection between cell division and biomineralization. These findings indicate that intracellular Ca-carbonate biomineralization by cyanobacteria has been overlooked by past studies and open new perspectives on the mechanisms and the evolutionary history of intra- and extracellular Ca-carbonate biomineralization by cyanobacteria.
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