Thylakoid

By

Azure Qian

Thylakoid is a membrane-bound organelle that exists inside chloroplasts and cyanobacteria. Thylakoid consists of the thylakoid membrane and the thylakoid lumen. The thylakoid lumen is surrounded by the thylakoid membrane. The thylakoids are usually stacked together, forming a sturcture called granum.

Thylakoid plays an important role in the process of photosynthesis, including water photolysis, electron transport chain and ATP sysnthesis, sorting by order. In the process of water photolysis, energy from light is utilized and water is split during this step. The second step is electron transport chain, electrons are used in two phases. The result of this step is oxygen and protons.

An interesting thing about thylakoid is that thylakoid may be unstacked in some types of algae and cyanobacteria. Unlike some other plants, cyanobacteria are photosynthetic prokaryotes. They have a highly differentiated membrane systems and their cell structure is quite different. For cyanobacteria, the entire cell acts like a thylakoid. Thylakoid within cyanobacteria cell have a low packing density and have a relatively large distance with each other.

Reference URL's:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylakoid

https://www.thoughtco.com/thylakoid-definition-and-function-4125710