Tests point to a toxic algal bloom that might have led to the unprecedented deaths of hundreds of African elephants in Botswana earlier this year, but the evidence isn’t conclusive.

Elevated levels of a neurotoxin in northeastern Brazil’s drinking water and a high incidence of microcephaly in the region led scientists to look for a link, and they found one.

Bacteria and sand form a strong building material.

Biological production of this greenhouse gas, once thought to be the reserve of anaerobic microbes, occurs in these widespread, photosynthesizing cyanobacteria.

Previously undetected cyanobacteria are symbionts of dinoflagellates.

Photosynthesis can happen in more than one way.  

Injecting photosynthetic microbes into oxygen-starved heart tissue can improve cardiac function in rodents. 

Metabolic activity, not light, drives the circadian clock in cyanobacteria.

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria sense light in much the same way as a human eyeball, scientists show.