Mitochondria and chloroplasts likely evolved from engulfed prokaryotes that once lived as independent organisms. At some point, a eukaryotic cell engulfed an aerobic prokaryote, which then formed ...

What Is the Origin of Chloroplasts? Like mitochondria, chloroplasts likely originated from an ancient symbiosis, in this case when a nucleated cell engulfed a photosynthetic prokaryote.

It appears that chloroplasts even siphon off some of the ATP generated by mitochondria, Mehta said. While the new findings do not definitively prove that this is how chloroplasts evolved ...