Cyanobacteria

Juan Apolinario C. Reyes

Most people do not know what cyanobacteria are, and even students and teachers who teach biology are barely moved by the significance of this tiny organism they see under the microscope.

Adults from my generation know them by the name "blue-green algae". It is the first photosynthetic organism that succeeded to use light energy to produce its food. We call that photosynthesis. We also know the waste product of this process is oxygen.

Our atmosphere became oxygenated because of cyanobacteria. In natural history, it is called the Great Oxygenation Event. It was given a special name because the rise of cyanobacteria meant the extinction of a different breed of organisms: the anaerobic organisms. Anaerobes used to be the dominant life forms on our planet. What happens after cyanobacteria is the rest of natural history.

What is profound about cyanobacteria is the fact that they still live with us. Dinosaurs are already extinct by at least 300 million years, and so are the "hell-pigs" and "terror-birds" that came after those giants. But cyanobacteria still live among us. In elementary biology, they are the first micro-organism investigated by students under the microscope.

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