BackgroundHSP90.5 is a chloroplast localized HSP90 family molecular chaperone in Arabidopsis, and it has been implicated in plant abiotic stress resistance, photomorphogenesis and nuclear-encoded protein import into the chloroplast. However, how these processes are controlled by HSP90 is not well understood. To understand the role of HSP90.5 in chloroplast function and biogenesis, in this study, we generated transgenic Arabidopsis plants that overexpress a C-terminally FLAG-tagged HSP90.5. By characterizing three HSP90.5 cosuppression lines, we demonstrated the essential role of HSP90.5 in plant growth and chloroplast biogenesis.ResultsImmunoblotting and quantitative PCR analyses revealed three independent HSP90.5 cosuppressing transgenic lines. All three cosuppression lines displayed a certain degree of variegated phenotype in photosynthetic tissues, and the cosuppression did not affect the expression of cytosolic HSP90 isoforms. HSP90.5 cosuppression was shown to be developmentally regulated and occurred mostly at late developmental stage in adult leaves and inflorescence tissues. HSP90.5 cosuppression also caused significantly reduced rosette leaf growth, transient starch storage, but did not affect rosette leaf initiation or inflorescence production, although the fertility was reduced. Isolation of chloroplasts and size exclusion chromatography analysis indicated that the FLAG at the HSP90.5 C-terminus does not affect its proper chloroplast localization and dimerization. Finally, transmission electron microscopy indicated that chloroplast development in HSP90.5 cosuppression leaves was significantly impaired and the integrity of chloroplast is highly correlated to the expression level of HSP90.5.ConclusionWe thoroughly characterized three HSP90.5 cosuppression lines, and demonstrated that properly controlled expression of HSP90.5 is required for plant growth and development in many tissues, and especially essential for chloroplast thylakoid formation. Since the homozygote of HSP90.5 knockout mutant is embryonically lethal, this study provides transgenic lines that mimic the conditional knockout line or siRNA line of the essential HSP90.5 gene in Arabidopsis.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1756-0500-7-643) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.