First recorded in 1975–80; cyano- 1 + bacteria
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Among them, cyanobacteria stand out for producing the oxygen that filled our atmosphere and allowed complex life to emerge.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 20, 2026
He found that Anabaena and some related cyanobacteria contain a system known as ParMR encoded within their chromosomes.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 20, 2026
Multicellular cyanobacteria evolved gradually from single-celled ancestors, gaining complexity over time.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 20, 2026
Microbes living near cyanobacteria could have quickly absorbed the oxygen being released.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 18, 2026
The beauty of the sky contrasts sharply with the water, sometimes blue, but often a murky green from cyanobacteria or stained black.
From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2026
Cyanobacteria, an ancient lineage of bacteria that perform photosynthesis, have been found to regulate their genes using the same physics principle used in AM radio transmission.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 25, 2024
Cyanobacteria such as spirulina are already grown industrially in several countries -- mostly for health foods.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 27, 2024
For a long time, a certain type of fossil lipid, so-called 2-methylhopanes, was considered to be an important biomarker for Cyanobacteria in sediments, some of which are hundreds of millions of years old.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 27, 2023
Cyanobacteria are photosynthesizers, while Actinobacteria are a group of very common bacteria that include species important in decomposition of organic wastes.
From Textbooks ● Jan. 1, 2015
Cyanobacteria are able to use carbon dioxide as a source of carbon.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 25, 2013
These observations permitted to identify N majensis as a fossil cyanobacterium.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 5, 2024
The most feared—and studied—cause of these freshwater “algal” blooms is a genus of cyanobacterium called Microcystis.
From Science Magazine ● Jul. 5, 2022
The two are forever on the trail of these composite symbiotic organisms, which they describe in the book as “an intensive cooperation between a fungus and an alga or a cyanobacterium, and sometimes all three.”
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2021
Some 2 billion years ago, a single-celled organism in Earth’s primeval ocean engulfed a mitochondrion and a cyanobacterium — and, now able to generate energy and photosynthesize, shunted off to change the world.
From Nature ● Apr. 2, 2019
Genetic and morphological studies suggest that plastids evolved from the endosymbiosis of an ancestral cell that engulfed a photosynthetic cyanobacterium.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 25, 2013
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
