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 * Toxic Algae**
 * [|Describe The **Characteristics Of Cyanobacteria**?] ||
 * Characteristics of Cyanobacteria**; 1. The **cyanobacteria** are the largest and most diverse group of photosynthetic bacteria, which was previously known as blue green algae. 2. **Cyanobacteria** are true prokaryotes. 3. They vary greatly in shape and appearance.

Cyanobacteria are aquatic and [|photosynthetic], that is, they live in the water, and can manufacture their own food. Because they are bacteria, they are quite small and usually unicellular, though they often grow in colonies large enough to see. They have the distinction of being the oldest known fossils, more than 3.5 billion years old, in fact! It may surprise you then to know that the cyanobacteria are still around; they are one of the largest and most important groups of [|bacteria] on earth. Many Proterozoic oil deposits are attributed to the activity of cyanobacteria. They are also important providers of nitrogen fertilizer in the cultivation of rice and beans. The cyanobacteria have also been tremendously important in shaping the course of evolution and ecological change throughout earth's history. The oxygen atmosphere that we depend on was generated by numerous cyanobacteria during the [|Archaean] and [|Proterozoic] Eras. Before that time, the atmosphere had a very different chemistry, unsuitable for life as we know it today. The other great contribution of the cyanobacteria is the origin of [|plants]. The chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves is actually a cyanobacterium living within the plant's cells. Sometime in the late Proterozoic, or in the early Cambrian, cyanobacteria began to take up residence within certain [|eukaryote] cells, making food for the eukaryote host in return for a home. This event is known as **endosymbiosis**, and is also the origin of the eukaryotic mitochondrion. Because they are photosynthetic and aquatic, cyanobacteria are often called "blue-green algae". This name is convenient for talking about organisms in the water that make their own food, but does not reflect any relationship between the cyanobacteria and other organisms called algae. Cyanobacteria are relatives of the bacteria, not eukaryotes, and it is only the //chloroplast// in eukaryotic algae to which the cyanobacteria are related. Information found at @http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro.html