| Species/Subspecies: | Microcystis aeruginosa | ||||||||
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| Etymology: | Genus name: Small bladder. Species epithet: Full of cupper rust (verdigris), therfore green. | ||||||||
| Significance: | [Important] | ||||||||
| Alternative Species Name(s): | Cyanobacteria were previously known as blue-green algae. However, they are in fact not algae and are now considered to belong to the phylum Cyanobacteria. | ||||||||
| Taxonomy: | Class Cyanophyceae Order Croococcales Family Microcystaceae Genus Microcystis |
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| Type Strain: | NIES843 = IAM M-247. | ||||||||
| Macromorphology (smell): | |||||||||
| Micromorphology: | Spherical cells (2-6 µm in diameter), which in culture appear alone or in pairs. In nature the cells appear in quadrat or cubic aggregates. Forms gas vesicles. | ||||||||
| Gram +/Gram -: | - | ||||||||
| Metabolism: | Photoautotrophic, i.e. light is used as the only energy source and CO2 is the only carbon source. | ||||||||
| Catalase/Oxidase: | |||||||||
| Spec. Char.: | M. aeruginosa has phycobiliproteins (e.g fycocyanin) and fycobilisomes in the thylakoids. Multiplication occurs by symmetric cleavage. | ||||||||
| Special Media: | |||||||||
| Reservoir: | Lake and brackish water. | ||||||||
| Virulence Factors: | M. aeruginosa forms a microcystin, which is a hepatotoxin causing damage to the liver. Microcystins are cyclic peptides, which contains unusual amino acids. Microcystins bind to certain enzymes and hamper their functions, which cause damages to the liver cells. | ||||||||
| Genome Sequence: |
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| 16S rRNA Seq.: |
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| Taxonomy/phylogeny:
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In the tree in the figure (Fig. 184:1), cyanobacteria and chlamydia are comparatively closely related, but this relation is also dependent upon the taxa that has been included in the tree. The nucleotide sequences of 16S rRNA from cyanobacteria have high sequence similarity with 16S rRNA from chloroplasts. | ||||||||
| Comment: | The nomenclature for taxa of cyanobacteria is in agreement with the "botanical code" rather than the "bacteriological code" due to the fact that cyanobacteria were earlier regarded as plants. There are good reasons to assume that chloroplasts originate from cyanobacteria. | ||||||||
| Link: | Cyanobakterier (blå-gröna alger) | ||||||||
| Updated: | 2022-05-25 |