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Ocean scientist Jonathan Zehr and colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz, addressed this enigma by collecting UCYN-A from a station in the North Pacific Ocean, where the alga is one of the most abundant nitrogen-fixing organisms. The cyanobacterium proved impossible to cultivate in the laboratory, but Zehr’s team nevertheless managed to sequence about 80% of its genome, including the section that contains the genes used in photosynthesis. The results were surprising, the authors say, because UCYN-A is very different from other known cyanobacteria. UCYN-A lacks the genes for photosystem II, the molecular equipment that breaks down water and releases oxygen during photosynthesis. This absence explains how UCYN-A is able to fix nitrogen during the day.

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