• Question: Whats a chloroplast

    Asked by anon-359860 to Ian on 21 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Ian Adams

      Ian Adams answered on 21 Mar 2023:

      It’s part of the plant cell that takes carbon dioxide out of the air and uses sun light to convert that into oxygen we can breath and energy (sugar) the plant can use to grow. Plants are a critical part of the environment that allow us to live and breath on this planet

Comments

  • Photo: Sam

    Sam commented on :

    chloroplasts have a very interesting history. A long time ago (about 1.6 billion years ago) chloroplasts were free-living bacteria that had evolved solar power. They could capture sunlight to make sugar, so they could make their own food. Then something weird happened. A chloroplast got swallowed up by a bigger bacteria, but the chloroplast continued to live inside the bigger bacteria, and fed it the sugars it made in exchange for protection and for the other nutrients.

    The chloroplast continued to grow and divide, and as the larger bacteria grew and divided, it passed on some of the chloroplasts to it’s offspring. These evolved over time into large multi-cellular life forms and were the ancestors of all plants living today. Chloroplasts still carry some of their own DNA, and divide inside plant cells, but they lost the ability to live freely outside plant cells a long time ago.