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Chloroplasts in envelopes: CO2 fixation by fully functional intact chloroplasts

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Abstract

Dan Arnon, Bob Whatley, Mary Belle Allen, and their colleagues, were the first to obtain evidence for `complete photosynthesis by isolated chloroplasts' albeit at rates which were 1% or less of those displayed by the intact leaf. By the 1960s, partly in the hope of confirming full functionality, there was a perceived need to raise these rates to the same order of magnitude as those displayed by the parent tissue. A nominal figure of 100 μmol/mgċchlorophyll/h (CO2 assimilated or O2 evolved) became a target much sought after. This article describes the contributions that Dick Jensen and Al Bassham [(1966) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 56: 1095–1101], and my colleagues and I, made to the achievement of this goal and the way in which it led to a better understanding of the role of inorganic phosphate in its relation to the movement of metabolites across chloroplast envelopes.

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  1. Robert Hill Institute, Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK

    David Alan Walker

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  1. David Alan Walker
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Correspondence to David Alan Walker.

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Walker, D.A. Chloroplasts in envelopes: CO2 fixation by fully functional intact chloroplasts. Photosynthesis Research 76, 319–327 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024962328483

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