Publication Date:
2004-08-18
Description:
Colonies of the Caribbean coral Montastraea cavernosa exhibit a solar-stimulated orange-red fluorescence that is spectrally similar to a variety of fluorescent proteins expressed by corals. The source of this fluorescence is phycoerythrin in unicellular, nonheterocystis, symbiotic cyanobacteria within the host cells of the coral. The cyanobacteria coexist with the symbiotic dinoflagellates (zooxanthellae) of the coral and express the nitrogen-fixing enzyme nitrogenase. The presence of this prokaryotic symbiont in a nitrogen-limited zooxanthellate coral suggests that nitrogen fixation may be an important source of this limiting element for the symbiotic association.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lesser, Michael P -- Mazel, Charles H -- Gorbunov, Maxim Y -- Falkowski, Paul G -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Aug 13;305(5686):997-1000.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Zoology and Center for Marine Biology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. mpl@cisunix.unh.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15310901" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Anthozoa/*microbiology/physiology
;
Cyanobacteria/genetics/isolation & purification/*physiology/ultrastructure
;
Dinoflagellida/isolation & purification/physiology
;
Fluorescence
;
Microscopy, Fluorescence
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
*Nitrogen Fixation
;
Nitrogenase/genetics/metabolism
;
Organelles/ultrastructure
;
Phycoerythrin/metabolism
;
*Symbiosis
;
Thylakoids/ultrastructure
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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