Novel cyanotoxin-producing Synechococcus in tropical lakes.

Picocyanobacteria are small cyanobacteria, being about 0.8-1.5 µm in size. They are present in freshwater environments all over the world and are known to cause harmful algal blooms, although their effects are not well understood. Algal blooms are important to manage because they threaten freshwater resources, with potentially severe effects on ecological and human health. There is also increased urgency due to urbanization and climate change trends which are expected to exacerbate these bloom dynamics. These changes are expected to especially favour picocyanobacteria groups, emphasizing the need for better characterization of their effects in the environment. In this study, we report the discovery that Synechococcus sp. could produce cylindrospermopsin (CYN) and anatoxin-a (ATX). This ability had never been previously reported for this species. Their toxin genes were also partial compared to other major producers such as Raphidiopsis sp. and Anabaena sp., demonstrating potentially unique synthesis pathways that provides insight into the various mechanisms of genetic variation that drives toxin synthesis. The Synechococcus sp. strains were found to produce about 9.0 × 10

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.