BACKGROUND Case studies and anecdotal reports have documented a range of acute illnesses associated with exposure to cyanobacteria and their toxins in recreational waters. The epidemiological data to date are limited; we sought to improve on the design of some previously conducted studies in order to facilitate revision and refinement of guidelines for exposure to cyanobacteria in recreational ...

BACKGROUND Salinity is known to affect almost half of the world's irrigated lands, especially rice fields. Furthermore, cyanobacteria, one of the critical inhabitants of rice fields have been characterized at molecular level from many different geographical locations. This study, for the first time, has examined the molecular diversity of cyanobacteria inhabiting Indian rice fields which experi...

Fatty acid composition of individual species of cyanobacteria is conserved and it may be used as a phylogenetic marker. The previously proposed classification system was based solely on biochemical data. Today, new genomic data are available, which support a need to update a previously postulated FA-based classification of cyanobacteria. These changes are necessary in order to adjust and synchr...

changes in abundance and biomass of cyanobacteria have been studied in the southern part of the caspian sea (the stretch between tonekabon and amirabad) in four seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) in which samples were taken from five depths of 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 meters in the stations of tonekabon, noushahr, babolsar and amirabad. samples were fixed in formalin (2-2.5%) before transfer...

The main goal of this study was to determine the distribution of potentially toxic cyanobacteria in 39 selected Polish water bodies. From the water bodies with blooms and also from those in which blooms were not visible 87 samples were investigated. For the first time samples from ponds localized in villages with high agricultural activities were included. Lakes for which microcystin concentrat...

Cyanobacteria are photoautotrophic prokaryotes with a remarkable metabolic flexibility. Many species of cyanobacteria produce hydrogen, and the efficiency of this process can be improved by genetic engineering. Isolated photosynthetic complexes of cyanobacteria that are capable of light absorption and charge separation can be utilized in hydrogen-producing devices that are driven by solar energ...

Engineering cyanobacteria into photosynthetic microbial cell factories for the production of biochemicals and biofuels is a promising approach toward sustainability. Cyanobacteria naturally grow on light and carbon dioxide, bypassing the need of fermentable plant biomass and arable land. By tapping into the central metabolism and rerouting carbon flux towards desirable compound production, cyan...

Cyanobacteria are rich sources of structurally-diverse molecules with promising pharmacological activities. Marine cyanobacteria have been proven to be true producers of some significant bioactive metabolites from marine invertebrates. Macrolides are a class of bioactive compounds isolated from marine organisms, including marine microorganisms in particular. The structural characteristics of ma...

Cyanobacteria and algae are becoming increasingly attractive cell factories for producing renewable biofuels and chemicals due to their ability to capture solar energy and CO(2) and their relatively simple genetic background for genetic manipulation. Increasing research efforts from the synthetic biology approach have been made in recent years to modify cyanobacteria and algae for various biote...

Dynamin-like proteins (DLPs) are a family of membrane-active proteins with low sequence identity. The proteins operate in different organelles in eukaryotic cells, where they trigger vesicle formation, membrane fusion, or organelle division. As discussed here, representatives of this protein family have also been identified in chloroplasts and DLPs are very common in cyanobacteria. Since cyanob...