= Cyanobacteria
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<Cyanobacteria> are <bacteria> that perform <oxygenic photosynthesis>: <light-dependent reactions> release <oxygen> from <water>. Their photosynthetic machinery operates on <thylakoid> membranes without a <chloroplast> or a <cell nucleus>. This is a particularly useful counterexample to equating <photosynthesis> with being a <plant>. <Chloroplasts> descend from an ancestral cyanobacterial partner through <endosymbiosis>; present-day <cyanobacteria> are independent descendants, rather than <chloroplasts> waiting to become <plants>. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26819/[Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell: chloroplasts and cyanobacteria].
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