ScienceDaily reports on a study recently published in Science magazine involving marine microbes called cyanobacteria, which are found to live symbiotically with single-celled algae. First discovered in 1998 by Professor Jonathan Zehr from the University of Santa Cruz, cyanobacteria is a nitrogen-fixing photosynthetic bacterium that “lacks the genes needed to carry out photosynthesis and other essential metabolic pathways.”    Image courtesy of Rachel Foster, MPI But new research finds that cyanobacterium receives the carbon it needs to survive via a host cell and in turn, the bacterium provides the cell with vital nitrogen. This symbiotic relationship utilizes the bacterium’s ability to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it “into a form that other organisms can use.” Scientists from both the University of Santa Cruz and the University of Hawaii participated in this study, along with Rachel Foster of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. Read more here!