This text shows late 1990s advances in chloroplast research, with contributions from 50 laboratories throughout the world. Subjects include advances in determining the molecular structure of key photosynthetic proteins, the regulation of chloroplast gene expression, the role of the chloroplast envelope membrane in the biogenesis of the organelle and the import machinery of nuclear encoded chloroplast proteins, the regulatory steps in chlorophyll and carotenoid biosyntheses, the processing/targeting/assembly of thylakoid protein components of photosynthetic units, and a discussion of the potential of chloroplast genetic manipulation as a tool in biotechnological applications.