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Journal ArticleDOI

Compartmentalized function through cell differentiation in filamentous cyanobacteria

Enrique Flores, +1 more
- 01 Jan 2010 - 
- Vol. 8, Iss: 1, pp 39-50
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TLDR
This Review addresses cyanob bacterial intercellular communication, the supracellular structure of the cyanobacterial filament and the basic principles that govern the process of heterocyst differentiation.
Abstract
Within the wide biodiversity that is found in the bacterial world, Cyanobacteria represents a unique phylogenetic group that is responsible for a key metabolic process in the biosphere - oxygenic photosynthesis - and that includes representatives exhibiting complex morphologies. Many cyanobacteria are multicellular, growing as filaments of cells in which some cells can differentiate to carry out specialized functions. These differentiated cells include resistance and dispersal forms as well as a metabolically specialized form that is devoted to N(2) fixation, known as the heterocyst. In this Review we address cyanobacterial intercellular communication, the supracellular structure of the cyanobacterial filament and the basic principles that govern the process of heterocyst differentiation.

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The Ecology and Evolution of Microbial Competition

TL;DR: Open questions and theoretical predictions of the long-term dynamics of competition that remain to be tested are highlighted to better predict the behaviour of microbes, and to control and manipulate microbial communities for industrial, environmental, and medical purposes.
Journal ArticleDOI

Bacterial solutions to multicellularity: a tale of biofilms, filaments and fruiting bodies.

TL;DR: The strategies that are used by bacteria to form and grow inMulticellular structures that have hallmark features of multicellularity, including morphological differentiation, programmed cell death and patterning are discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI

Evolution of multicellularity coincided with increased diversification of cyanobacteria and the Great Oxidation Event

TL;DR: The results suggest that multicellularity could have played a key role in triggering cyanobacterial evolution around the Great Oxidation Event, and an origin of cyanobacteria before the rise of atmospheric oxygen.
Journal ArticleDOI

The origin of multicellularity in cyanobacteria

TL;DR: Comparison to the fossil record supports an early origin of multicellularity, possibly as early as the "Great Oxygenation Event" that occurred 2.45 - 2.22 billion years ago.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

Generic assignments, strain histories, and properties of pure cultures of cyanobacteria

TL;DR: Revisions are designed to permit the generic identification of cultures, often difficult through use of the field-based system of phycological classification, and are both constant and readily determinable in cultured material.
Journal ArticleDOI

Molecular Basis of Bacterial Outer Membrane Permeability Revisited

TL;DR: This review summarizes the development in the field since the previous review and begins to understand how this bilayer of the outer membrane can retard the entry of lipophilic compounds, owing to increasing knowledge about the chemistry of lipopolysaccharide from diverse organisms and the way in which lipopoly Saccharide structure is modified by environmental conditions.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles

TL;DR: Virtually all nonequilibrium electron transfers on Earth are driven by a set of nanobiological machines composed largely of multimeric protein complexes associated with a small number of prosthetic groups.
Book

The Molecular Biology of Cyanobacteria

TL;DR: This work focuses on the study of the structure and function of the Photosystem II Reaction Center in Cyanobacteria, which consists of Chloroplast Origins and Evolution, and its role in the Evolution of the Universal Enzyme.
Journal ArticleDOI

A molecular timeline for the origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes

TL;DR: An ancient (late Paleoproterozoic) origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes with the primary endosymbiosis that gave rise to the first alga having occurred after the split of the Plantae from the opisthokonts sometime before 1,558 MYA is supported.
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