Abstract
It has been believed that photosynthetic active chloroplasts have internal membranes consisting with stroma and grana thylakoid (SGT). However, we found that SGT in young leaves on development altered its structure to ones that defect stroma legion during leaf maturation (FGT). Here we report the relationship between the morphological feature in thylakoid membranes and the rates of leaf growth of Arabidopsis thaliana. Young leaves developing on reproductive growth has FGT type chloroplasts and grew much slower than those of vegetative growth, furthermore ones whose flowers cut off from the former plants recovered SGT type chloroplasts and the growth rate equal to the latter. By the examination of leaves randomly chosen, it was found that the percentage of FGT chloroplasts in a leaf negatively was correlated with the rate of leaf development. We consider that the results indicate possible interaction between thylakoid structure and metabolism of photosynthetic products.
