Chloroplast: Structure to Function Relation - Essay Example

This paper purports to fulfill this aim. The chloroplasts are an example of photoreceptors (Moglich et al. 21-47), which is well suited to its purpose in terms of its design and structure, both physical as well as molecular and chemical. The functioning of the choroplasts is enhanced by the presence of four protein complexes (Nelson and Yocum 521-565); photosystem I (Nelson and Yocum 521-565), photosystem II (Nelson and Yocum 521-565), cytochrome b6f complex (Nelson and Yocum 521-565), and F-ATPase (Nelson and Yocum 521-565).

Phootsystem I generates and determines enthalpy in the living organisms (Nelson and Yocum 521-565), and photosystem II oxidizes water (Nelson and Yocum 521-565). There are six classes of photoreceptors (Moglich et al. 21-47), and depending upon the specific type of chloroplast chemical and molecular make up, it can fall into at least five of those classes. The classes include light-oxygen-voltage sensors (Moglich et al. 21-47), phytochromes (Moglich et al. 21-47), xanthopsins (Moglich et al. 21-47), cryptochromes (Moglich et al. 21-47), rhodopsins (Moglich et al. 21-47), and blue-light sensors which use flavin adenine dinucleotide (Moglich et al. 21-47). . 21-47). The chloroplasts are membranous organelles (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) that contain stacks of membranes containing the photochemical machinery in the form of integral and non-integral proteins and phytochrome complexes (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) .

One such membranous sack is called a thylakoid (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) , and a stack of membranous sacks or thylakoids is termed as a granum (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) . Each chloroplast may contain multiple grana depending upon many factors, such as the level of the activity of the chloroplast, its location in the leave, and its chlorophyll content (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) . This photosynthetic set up exhibits a great degree of functional and dynamic flexibility (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) , owing to its structure and molecular constitution (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) .

In particular, the photosystem II is the most involved in terms of this flexibility (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) . The plant adjusts the photosynthetic capability by various methods (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) , due to the structural organization of the chloroplast just described. This degree of functionality can be altered by, for example, by varying the number of grana and the height of the grana in each chloroplast (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) , thereby reducing or increasing the capacity of photosynthesis; the molecular activity in the membranes of the grana (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) ; the partition in the form of the gap between the thylakoid stacks (Anderson, Chow, and Rivas 575-587) ; the aqueous internal environment of the lumen of the thylakoid (Anderson, Chow,