Hard shell, soft blue-green core: Ecology, processes, and modern applications of calcification in terrestrial cyanobacteria

Patrick Jung; Laura Briegel-Williams; Stefan Dultz; Carina Neff; Gunnar Heibrock; Curtis Monger; Nicole Pietrasiak; Lena Keller; Julia Hale; Jan Friedek; Timo Schmidt; Georg Guggenberger; Michael Lakatos

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111280

Hard shell, soft blue-green core: Ecology, processes, and modern applications of calcification in terrestrial cyanobacteria

iScience. 2024 Oct 28;27(12):111280. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111280. eCollection 2024 Dec 20.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, Integrative Biotechnology, Carl-Schurz-Str. 10-16, 66953 Pirmasens, Germany.
² Leibniz Universität Hannover, Institute of Earth System Sciences, Section Soil Science, Herrenhäuser Str. 2, 30419 Hannover, Germany.
³ University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, Building and Design, Schoenstr. 6, 67659 Kaiserslautern, Germany.
⁴ New Mexico State University, Plant and Environmental Science, Las Cruces, NM, USA.
⁵ University of Nevada, Life Science Department, Las Vegas, NV, USA.
⁶ Weincampus Neustadt, University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern, Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum Rheinpfalz, Breitenweg 71, 67435 Neustadt a.d. Weinstraße, Germany.
⁷ University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Architecture, An der Hochschule 1, 86161 Augsburg, Germany.

Abstract

Cyanobacteria are the oldest photoautotrophic lineage that release oxygen during photosynthesis, an ability that possibly evolved as far as 3.5 billion years ago and changed the Earth's environment-both in water and on land. Linked to the mechanism of carbon accumulation by cyanobacteria during photosynthesis are their calcifying properties, a process of biologically mediated mineralization of CO₂ by precipitation with calcium to CaCO₃. In recent decades, scientific research has mainly focused on calcifying cyanobacteria from aquatic habitats, while their terrestrial relatives have been neglected. This review not only presents the ecology of terrestrial calcifying cyanobacteria in caves and biocrusts but also discusses recent biotechnological applications, such as the production of living building materials through microbial-induced carbonate precipitation for structural engineering, which has the potential to open a new and efficient pathway for mitigating climate change, e.g., as carbon capture and storage technology.

Keywords: Biogeochemistry; Ecology; Geochemistry; Microbiology.

Publication types

Review