Effects of Cadmium on the Marine Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria, being one of the earliest producers on the planet, have developed unique survival strategies. These uniqueness of cyanobacteria are drawing the attention of the scientists to study the properties of this organism for the goal of the pollution control. Due to industrialisation and other reasons, water bodies across the globe is are facing the problems of the heavy metal toxicity. As a way to remediate the water bodies polluted with the heavy metals like cadmium, use of cyanobacteria could be significant. Cyanobacteria have been shown to remove or absorb 10-60% of the contaminating cadmium in different previous studies. Strain AP25 isolated from islands of the Indian Sundarbans have been used for this study. The photosynthetic pigments of AP 25 have been studied in order to determine whether the uptaken heavy metals alter the vital cellular processes in cyanobacteria. Along with the photosynthetic pigments, the different physiological parameters, like the biomass, total protein of AP25 also showed decline with the time even when the cadmium concentration remained a constant of 1000 µM. The area of study concerning phytoremediation is extremely vast and requires extensive research, this study would act as a stepping stone to elaborate the research in this field of bioremediation, the marine cyanobacteria.