the.com/chloroplast
A captured bacterium that never left, now quietly feeding the entire planet from inside a leaf.
means The green organelle inside plant and algal cells where photosynthesis happens, turning sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into sugar.
from From Greek 'chloros' (pale green, the same color-root behind chlorine and chlorophyll) plus 'plastos' (formed or molded, from 'plassein,' to shape — a cousin of 'plastic' and 'plasma'). So literally a 'green-formed thing.' The word is a 19th-century scientific coinage from the era when biologists were busy naming the tiny structures the microscope kept revealing inside cells.
- former prisoner
- Was once a free-living cyanobacterium, swallowed billions of years ago
- own DNA
- Keeps its own genome, defying its host cell
- oxygen factory
- Made Earth's atmosphere breathable, possibly killing most early life
- sun trick
- Splits water with light to release the oxygen you breathe
- self-replicating
- Divides independently like the microbe it descends from
for instance
chloroplast of spinach — most studied in photosynthesis research, isolated thylakoid membranes used in thousands of lab experiments