The chloroplast is an organelle in plant cells that originated from the ancient endosymbiosis of a cyanobacterium and possesses its own genome. The translation of the genes of the chloroplast is carried out by a ribosome whose structure and composition closely resemble those of its bacterial counterpart. However, Kamel Hammani’s team demonstrated that in Arabidopsis thaliana, a protein of no bacterial origin associates with the chloroplast ribosome to stimulate its assembly and the translation of chloroplast genes. This work was published on January 5, 2021 in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.
A eukaryotic protein at the heart of the synthesis of the chloroplast ribosome!
