In this site, you can find free pictures, photos, diagrams, images and information related to a wide range of different plants. Well, chloroplasts are organelles present in plant cells and some eukaryotic organisms. Chloroplasts are the most important plastids found in plant cells. It is the structure in a green plant cell in which photosynthesis occurs. It is found in higher plants are generally biconvex or planoconvex shaped. In different plants chloroplasts have different shapes, they vary from spheroid, filamentous saucer-shaped, discoid or ovoid shaped. The first chloroplast diagram can be seen in the following picture.
The diagram above shows the basic structure of a chloroplast, featuring an inner membrane, outer membrane, intermembrane, stroma (aqueous fluid), lamella, lumen and more. Since chloroplast is one of the three types of plastids, it takes part in the process of photosynthesis and it is of great biological importance. Animal cells do not have chloroplasts. All green plant take part in the process of photosynthesis which converts energy into sugars and the byproduct of the process is oxygen that all animals breathe. This process happens in chloroplasts. You can find other chloroplast diagrams with more detailed structure of chloroplast in the following pictures.
As shown in the diagram of a plant cell, chloroplasts are bigger and fatter than mitochondria. That is why chloroplasts settle first when photosynthetic cells are homogenized and centrifuged. A typical chloroplast has a biconvex shape and a maximum dimension of about 5μm (i.e. 5 micrometers = 0.005 mm). The following figures below is the simplified diagrams of the structure of a chloroplast. The structures are not necessarily drawn to scale e.g. the membranes enclosing the chloroplast are shown larger than in real life in order to show the intermembrane space. Parts of a chloroplast are shown in enough detail to help students re-draw this diagram by hand to include in study notes or homework.
We also provide you with the unlabeled version of the diagram as the media for evaluation. All diagrams are in high definition and free to be saved and printed!