Nitrogen fixing organelle in a marine alga

Symbiotic interactions were key to evolution of chloroplast and mitochondria organelles which mediate carbon and energy metabolism in eukaryotes. Biological nitrogen fixation, the reduction of abundant atmospheric nitrogen gas (N2) to biologically available ammonia is a key metabolic process performed exclusively by prokaryotes. UCYN-A is a metabolically streamlined N2-fixing cyanobacterium previously reported to be an endosymbiont of a marine unicellular alga. Here we show that UCYN-A has been tightly integrated into algal cell architecture and organellar division, and that it imports proteins encoded by the algal genome. These are characteristics of organelles and show that UCYN-A has evolved beyond endosymbiosis and functions as an early evolutionary stage N2-fixing organelle, or “nitroplast”.