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| The near-boiling pools of
Octopus Spring in Yellowstone National Park are ringed with microbial
mats – highly organized communities where
photosynthetic cyanobacteria serve as the main power plants. Researchers
have found that the single-celled cyanobacterium Synechococcus drops its
day job of photosynthesis, and surprisingly fixes nitrogen gas (N2) into
biologically useful compounds at night.
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| This cross section of a hot-spring microbial mat reveals a green layer
of photosynthetic cells, including Synechococcus, at the surface.
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