Plastid

Common card · No. 266859

A plastid is a membrane-bound organelle found in the cells of plants, algae, and some other eukaryotic organisms. Plastids are considered to be intracellular endosymbiotic cyanobacteria. Examples of plastids include chloroplasts (used for photosynthesis); chromoplasts (used for synthesis and storage of pigments); leucoplasts (non-pigmented plastids, some of which can differentiate); and apicoplasts (non-photosynthetic plastids of apicomplexa derived from secondary endosymbiosis). A permanent primary endosymbiosis event occurred about 1.5 billion years ago in the Archaeplastida clade—land plants, red algae, green algae and glaucophytes—probably with a cyanobiont, a symbiotic cyanobacteria related to the genus Gloeomargarita. Another primary endosymbiosis event occurred later, between 140 and 90 million years ago, in the photosynthetic plastids Paulinella amoeboids of the cyanobacteria genera Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus, or the "PS-clade". Secondary and tertiary endosymbiosis events...

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