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The Cyanobacteria—Isolation, Purification and Identification

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The Prokaryotes

The oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria comprise two groups, the cyanobacteria and the prochlorophytes, that are distinguished by their photosynthetic pigment composition. The cyanobacteria contain chlorophyll a and phycobiliproteins as their primary photosynthetic pigments (see Cyanobacteria—Ecology, Physiology and Molecular Genetics in this Volume) while the prochlorophytes contain chlorophylls a and b and lack phycobiliproteins (see The Genus Prochlorococcus in this Volume).

The cyanobacteria are morphologically and developmentally one of the most diverse groups of prokaryotes. They range from simple unicellular forms that reproduce by binary fission to complex filamentous forms that possess a variety of highly differentiated cell types. Some of the filamentous forms are capable of true branching, and some are even truly multicellular, as the result of cellular differentiation and functional specialization between vegetative cells and heterocysts, the sites of oxygenic photosynthesis...

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Authors
  1. John B. Waterbury
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, Box 196, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0312, USA

    Martin Dworkin Professor Dr. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University Medical School, 299 Campus Drive, Fairchild, D039, Stanford, CA, 94305-5124, USA

    Stanley Falkow

  3. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  4. Department of Microbiology, Technical University Munich, 80290, Munich, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Schleifer

  5. DSMZ- German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH, Mascheroder Weg 1b, 38124, Braunschweig, Germany

    Erko Stackebrandt

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Waterbury, J.B. (2006). The Cyanobacteria—Isolation, Purification and Identification. In: Dworkin, M., Falkow, S., Rosenberg, E., Schleifer, KH., Stackebrandt, E. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30744-3_38

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