Re: What are the structures of wheat, rice, and barley amyloplasts?

I can't find much information that is specific to amyloplasts (as opposed to plastids in general), probably because their structure is quite simple. In the text “Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Plants” by Buchanan et al, there are only a couple short paragraphs about amyloplasts, and just a few sentences about their structure.

Like other plastids, amyloplasts have their own genome, though many of the proteins found in amyloplasts are encoded by nuclear genes. In addition, they have an inner and outer membrane. Starch granules are found within the inner membrane of amyloplasts, and these serve to store carbohydrates. In some cases, another function of the granules is to increase the density of the amyloplast so that it may act as a small weight, or statolith, for a gravity sensing mechanism.

I could not find any information indicating that there are significant structural differences in the amyloplast of different species.

Sorry there isn't more to tell you, but there isn’t much to say about the structure of these simple organelles.

Dr. Alex Brands Lehigh University

Reference:
Biochemistry And Molecular Biology Of Plants. Buchanan BB, Gruissem W, Jones RL, eds. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Rockville, Md. 2000.

Moderator adds: You can find copious images of amyloplasts online by doing an image search for amyloplast.
Similarly, you can refine the search to specify wheat amyloplast, rice amyloplast and barley amyloplast images.
However, I don't see much in the way of differences. --SM