Supplementary Materials for Chapter 4

Abstract: Cyanobacteria are crucial primary producers in many ecosystems, transforming light into chemical energy. Their death plays a vital role in releasing organic carbon and nitrogen into the environment for heterotrophs, creating a pathway from the atmosphere to the sediment. With warming waters, algal blooms are becoming more common and larger in size, highlighting the need to understand the underlying mechanisms of death of these blooms. Although the lysis of Cyanobacteria through viral predation is well-documented in marine environments, there has been less exploration of other mechanisms of death, including programmed cell death and its various (a)biotic triggers. In this study, we investigated a sudden and rapid mechanism of cell lysis in an alkaliphilic, filamentous, mat-forming cyanobacterium, Candidatus Sodalinema alkaliphilum, cultivated, with its associated heterotrophs, from alkaline soda lakes.