Skip to main content
An official website of the United States government.

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

NALT Concept Space
U.S. Department of Agriculture

NALT Core

Concept information

  1. Taxonomic Hierarchy
  2. Eubacteria
  3. Cyanobacteria

Preferred term

Cyanobacteria

Type

  • Organism

Definition

  • Information A phylum of oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria comprised of unicellular to multicellular bacteria possessing chlorophyll a and carrying out oxygenic photosynthesis. Cyanobacteria are the only known organisms capable of fixing both carbon dioxide (in the presence of light) and nitrogen. Cell morphology can include nitrogen-fixing heterocysts and/or resting cells called akinetes. Formerly called blue-green algae, cyanobacteria were traditionally treated as algae.

    Source: Medical Subject Headings

    Type: Concept definition

Broader concept

Narrower concepts

Related concepts

Synonyms

  • blue green algae
  • blue-green algae
  • blue green bacteria
  • blue-green bacteria
  • Cyanochloronta
  • Cyanophyta

Scope note

  • Cyanobacteria is at the level of phylum; do not confuse with the genus Cyanobacterium in the order Chroococcales.

Source

  • Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology and Ruggiero, et. al. "A Higher Level Classification of All Living Organisms".PLoS One, 10 (2015).

Has taxonomic rank

In other languages

  • Cyanobacteria

    Spanish

  • blue green algae
  • blue-green algae
  • cianobacterias
  • Cyanochloronta
  • Cyanophyta

URI

https://lod.nal.usda.gov/nalt/72

Download this concept:

RDF/XML TURTLE JSON-LD Created 1/19/06, last modified 4/14/20