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NALT Concept Space
U.S. Department of Agriculture

NALT Full

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

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