Structure of a Chloroplast

- Chloroplasts are 3-10 micrometers in diameter.

- There can be up to 100 chloroplasts in a palisade mesophyll cell and only a few in other cells.
Feature

Details

Envelope (double
membrane)

It is not connected to the thylakoid membranes

Thylakoids

A system of fluid filled sacs made of membranes. They stack up in certain parts of
the chloroplast to form grana. These contain photosynthetic pigments, enzymes
for photolysis, ATP synthase, electron carriers which make up the electron
transport chain (ETC). This is the site of the light dependent reactions.

Stroma

This is the fluid inside the chloroplast which bathes the membranes of the grana
and receives the products of the light dependent reactions. This is the site of the
light independent reactions (Calvin cycle). It contains circular DNA strands, 70S
ribosomes, sugars and organic acids, as well as starch grains.

- The pigments mentioned above are arranged in a funnel-shape to form a photosystem.

Many accessory pigments (hundreds) surround the reactions centre in these light-harvesting
clusters.

The reaction centre made of chlorophyll a accepts the light energy funnelled to it from the
surrounding accessory pigments (chlorophyll b and carotenoids such as xantophylls and
carotenes).
There are two types of photosystems: PS1 (a.k.a. P700) which is activated by light of 700nm
wavelength and PS2 (a.k.a P680) which is activated by light of 680nm wavelength.