carbon fixation
Oscillator
Tag archives for carbon fixation
Carboxysomes in a row
Posted by Christina Agapakis on March 13, 2010 Carboxysomes are small compartments inside photosynthetic bacteria where the machinery for capturing carbon dioxide is concentrated. You can see carboxysomes and their characteristic virus-like shape when you look at slices of these bacteria under an electron microscope: Until recently, no one had looked at carboxysomes under the microscope in cells that were still alive. My…
Bacterial “Organelles”
Posted by Christina Agapakis on March 10, 2010 Animal cells are made up of many smaller membrane-bound compartments called organelles that perform highly specialized functions necessary for life. Incredibly, several of these organelles have been shown to be evolutionarily related to free-living bacteria, captured and incorporated inside a larger cell billions of years ago in a complex mutually beneficial relationship, known as endosymbiosis…