Search for: All records

Chloroplasts are endosymbiotic organelles derived from cyanobacteria. They have a double envelope membrane, including the outer envelope and the inner envelope. A complex membrane system, thylakoids, exists inside the chloroplast. It is the site of the light-dependent reactions of photosynthesis. The stroma is the main site of the carbon fixation reactions. Although photosynthesis is a very complicated process with many proteins involved, there are many other important processes that occur in chloroplasts, including the regulation of photosynthesis, the biogenesis and maintenance of the structures, carbohydrate, lipid, tetrapyrrole, amino acid, and isoprenoid metabolism, production of some phytohormones, production of specialized metabolites, regulation of redox, and interactions with other parts of the cell (Sabater, 2018). During evolution, most of the cyanobacterial genes were lost and many of them were transferred into the nuclear genome. A majority of chloroplast proteins are nuclear-encoded and possess an N-terminal transit peptide which helps the protein to be targeted into chloroplasts. Chloroplasts have their own highly reduced genome which works coordinately with the nuclear genome for the biogenesis and function of chloroplasts (Liebers et al., 2022). This Research Topic presents studies covering different aspects of chloroplast function, including photosynthesis, biogenesis, structure, and maintenance. These works push the frontiers of chloroplast research further in the field of plant biology.