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. 2020 Jul 3;11:1020. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2020.01020

Figure 2.

Figure 2

Dimorphic chloroplasts and plasmodesmata in Kranz anatomy of the maize leaf. (A, B) Transmission electron micrographs of a mesophyll cell (MC) chloroplast and a bundle sheath cell (BSC) chloroplast. Grana stacks (dashed brackets) are abundant in the MC chloroplast (A). Thylakoids are monolayered in the BSC chloroplast (B). Three unstacked stroma lamellae are marked with arrows in B. (C) Plasmodesmata (PD) at the MC-BSC interface of mature (D) maize leaf tissues. PD (red arrows) in the mature tissue have “sphincter” rings in the MC side wall (blue arrowheads). The BSC wall (yellow bracket) is suberized and it is stained differentially from the MC wall (orange bracket). (D) A diagram illustrating the dimorphic chloroplasts and PD in the maize leaf based on data published in 1996; Evert et al. (1977); Danila et al. (2016), and Mertz and Brutnell (2014). MCs and BSCs are linked via clusters of specialized PD that transverse a suberized cell wall. St: starch particle. Scale bars in (A, B) and (C, D) indicate 500 nm, and 100 nm, respectively.