However, this anaerobic process is highly sensitive to oxygen, and since cyanobacteria produce oxygen in photosynthesis, they are faced with a paradoxical situation, where one critically important (for supporting growth) biochemical process is inhibited by another.Ģ-fixing cyanobacterial taxa have developed an array of biochemical, morphological, and ecological adaptations to minimize the “oxygen problem” however, none of these allows NĢ fixation to function at a high enough efficiency so that it can supply N needs at the ecosystem scale, where N losses via denitrification, burial, and advection often exceed the inputs of “new” N by NĢ fixation. Certain bloom-forming cyanobacterial species are capable of conducting NĢ fixation hence, they are able to circumvent N limitation in these waters. Nitrogen fixation, the enzymatic conversion of atmospheric N (Nģ), is a microbially mediated process by which “new” N is supplied to N-deficient water bodies.
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