Still challenging: the ecological function of the cyanobacterial toxin microcystin – What we know so far

Abstract

Microcystins (MCs) are the most commonly studied cyanotoxins. While these past studies have mainly focused on the toxicity of MCs, the evolutionary history of life has shown that toxicity can be considered as an assigned role to MCs. Nowadays, there is a growing interest in understanding the importance of cyanotoxins in any of the physiological processes or beyond at the ecological level. This review evaluates variously proposed intracellular and extracellular functions of MCs and how they benefit the producing cyanobacterium. However, the strain-specific and divergent laboratory and field results obtained to date have made it difficult to generalize.

• Cyanobacteria
• cyanotoxins
• microcystins
• physiological function

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. This study was sponsored by Elsa-Neumann-Scholarship (formally known as NaFöG) from the state of Berlin.