ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Emergence and evolution of heterocyte glycolipid biosynthesis enabled specialized nitrogen fixation in cyanobacteria.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- New genomic insights into long-chain alkenone biosynthesis by the coccolithophorid marine alga Gephyrocapsa huxleyi.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Unusual Plastoquinones in Non-Phototrophic Nitrifying Bacteria.Environmental microbiology reports · 2025Article
- Discovering Hidden Archaeal and Bacterial Lipid Producers in a Euxinic Marine System.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Emergence and evolution of heterocyte glycolipid biosynthesis enabled specialized nitrogen fixation in cyanobacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Heterocytes, specialized cells for nitrogen fixation in cyanobacteria, are surrounded by heterocyte glycolipids (HGs), which contribute to protection of the nitrogenase enzyme from oxygen. Diverse HGs preserve in the sediment and have been widely used as evidence of past nitrogen fixation, and structural variation has been suggested to preserve taxonomic information and reflect paleoenvironmental conditions. Here, by comprehensive HG identification and screening of HG biosynthetic gene clusters throughout cyanobacteria, we reconstruct the convergent evolutionary history of HG structure, in which different clades produce the same HGs. We find that rudimentary HG biosynthetic machinery was already present in cyanobacteria before the emergence of heterocytes for functions unrelated to nitrogen fixation and identify HG analogs produced by specific and distantly related nonheterocytous cyanobacteria. These structurally less complex molecules represent precursors of HGs, suggesting that HGs arose after a genomic reorganization and expansion of ancestral biosynthetic machinery, enabling the rise of cyanobacterial heterocytes in an increasingly oxygenated atmosphere. Our results open a chapter in the potential use of diagenetic products of HGs and HG analogs as fossils for reconstructing the evolution of multicellularity and division of labor in cyanobacteria.
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