Journal
ANNUAL REVIEW OF MICROBIOLOGY, VOL 73
Volume 73, Issue -, Pages 435-456Publisher
ANNUAL REVIEWS
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-micro-090817-062650
Keywords
symbiosis; cyanobacteria; nitrogen fixation; unicellular symbiosis; phytoplankton; photosymbiosis
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Cyanobacteria are common in symbiotic relationships with diverse multicellular organisms (animals, plants, fungi) in terrestrial environments and with single-celled heterotrophic, mixotrophic, and autotrophic protists in aquatic environments. In the sunlit zones of aquatic environments, diverse cyanobacterial symbioses exist with autotrophic taxa in phytoplankton, including dinoflagellates, diatoms, and haptophytes (prymnesiophytes). Phototrophic unicellular cyanobacteria related to Synechococcus and Prochlorococcus are associated with a number of groups. N-2-fixing cyanobacteria are symbiotic with diatoms and haptophytes. Extensive genome reduction is involved in the N-2-fixing endosymbionts, most dramatically in the unicellular cyanobacteria associated with haptophytes, which have lost most of the photosynthetic apparatus, the ability to fix C, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle. The mechanisms involved in N-2-fixing symbioses may involve more interactions beyond simple exchange of fixed C for N. N-2-fixing cyanobacterial symbioses are widespread in the oceans, even more widely distributed than the best-known free-living N-2-fixing cyanobacteria, suggesting they may be equally or more important in the global ocean biogeochemical cycle of N.
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