Page "Plant cell" Paragraph 5

* Plastids, the most notable being the chloroplasts, which contain chlorophyll a green coloured pigment which is used for absorbing sunlight and is used by a plant to make its own food in the process is known as photosynthesis.

Other types of plastid are the amyloplasts, specialized for starch storage, elaioplasts specialized for fat storage, and chromoplasts specialized for synthesis and storage of pigments.

As in mitochondria, which have a genome encoding 37 genes, plastids have their own genomes of about 100 – 120 unique genes and, it is presumed, arose as prokaryotic endosymbionts living in the cells of an early eukaryotic ancestor of the land plants and algae.