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CYANOBACTERIA
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Predominantly photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms containing a blue pigment in addition to chlorophyll; occur singly or in colonies in diverse habitats; important as phytoplankton
Synonyms:
blue-green algae; cyanobacteria
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("cyanobacteria" is a kind of...):
eubacteria; eubacterium; true bacteria (a large group of bacteria having rigid cell walls; motile types have flagella)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "cyanobacteria"):
nostoc (found in moist places as rounded jellylike colonies)
trichodesmium (large colonial bacterium common in tropical open-ocean waters; important in carbon and nitrogen fixation)
Holonyms ("cyanobacteria" is a member of...):
class Cyanobacteria; class Cyanophyceae; Cyanophyceae (photosynthetic bacteria found in fresh and salt water, having chlorophyll a and phycobilins; once thought to be algae: blue-green algae)
Derivation:
cyanobacterial (relating to or caused by photosynthetic bacteria of the class Cyanobacteria)
Context examples:
The research was rooted in the fact that, although there are no plants that can fix nitrogen from the air, there is a subset of cyanobacteria (bacteria that photosynthesize like plants) that is able to do so.
(Bacteria Used to Create Fertilizer Out of Thin Air, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
The research team wanted to take the genes from Cyanothece, responsible for this day-night mechanism, and put them into another type of cyanobacteria, Synechocystis, to coax this bug into fixing nitrogen from the air, too.
(Bacteria Used to Create Fertilizer Out of Thin Air, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
