genetic independence of chloroplasts.

In the following half-century, phycologists often used the pyrenoid as a taxonomic marker, but physiologists long failed to appreciate the importance of pyrenoids in aquatic photosynthesis. The classical paradigm, which prevailed until the early 1980s, was that the pyrenoid was the site of starch synthesis. Microscopic observations were easily misleading as a starch sheath often encloses pyrenoids. The discovery of pyrenoid deficient mutants with normal starch grains