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Predominantly photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms containing a blue pigment in addition to chlorophyll
Answer for the clue "Predominantly photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms containing a blue pigment in addition to chlorophyll ", 13 letters:
cyanobacteria
Alternative clues for the word cyanobacteria
Word definitions for cyanobacteria in dictionaries
Wikipedia
Word definitions in Wikipedia
Cyanobacteria , also known as Cyanophyta , is a phylum of bacteria that obtain their energy through photosynthesis . The name "cyanobacteria" comes from the color of the bacteria ( = blue). They are often called blue-green algae , although the name is sometimes ...
Wiktionary
Word definitions in Wiktionary
n. (plural of cyanobacterium English).
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
cyanobacterium \cyanobacterium\ pl. cyanobacteria \cyanobacteria\ [from the pigment phycocyanin.] any of a group of photosynthetic autotrophic prokaryotic microorganisms possessing characteristics of both bacteria and plants. When classed as bacteria, they ...
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. predominantly photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms containing a blue pigment in addition to chlorophyll; occur singly or in colonies in diverse habitats; important as phytoplankton [syn: blue-green algae ]
Usage examples of cyanobacteria.
At some point in the first billion years of life, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, learned to tap into a freely available resource—the hydrogen that exists in spectacular abundance in water.
As they went through their chemical routines, the cyanobacteria became very slightly tacky, and that tackiness trapped microparticles of dust and sand, which became bound together to form slightly weird but solid structures—the stromatolites that were featured in the shallows of the poster on Victoria Bennett’s office wall.
Microbes, including the modern versions of cyanobacteria, supply the greater part of the planet’s breathable oxygen.
For one thing, cyanobacteria survived the experience, and they photosynthesize.
The average temperature was below the freezing point of water, and what little oxygen existed was mostly generated by cyanobacteria sharing the air with the clouds above—clouds trapped in warmer atmospheric layers and never yielding rain.
Apart from faint hints in the deep equatorial basins some of his fellow surveyors were exploring, the cyanobacteria in the clouds proved once and for all that such life could evolve independently on another world.
The Adrasteian cyanobacteria had never evolved into anything terribly sophisticated.
Three and a half billion years ago the cyanobacteria developed photosynthesis -- using the energy of sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
The cyanobacteria kept the hydrogen and excreted the oxygen, polluting Earth's atmosphere with it (from the point of view of the other, anaerobic, bacterial.
So they'd put a landing craft smack in the center of the caldera to look for life -- and they'd found it: strange forms of cyanobacteria, eating CO2 and nitrogen, water and sunlight, and slowly replicating as they'd done for the past billion-odd years.