We report the cloning and characterization of a 1881 bp Thalassiosira weissflogii (Bacillariophyceae, Centrales) plastid genomic fragment containing the ferredoxin gene (petF) and several other genes. The organization of this fragment is exactly the same as its equivalent region from the plastid genome of another centric diatom, Odontella sinensis, and the sequences share high homology in both coding and non-coding regions. Traces of a probable vestigial protein-coding gene and of a partial trn gene are found just after the trnR gene in both diatoms as well as in the plastid genome of the red alga Porphyra purpurea, illustrating the close relationship between red algal and heterokont algal plastid genomes and arguing in favour of the origin of the latter by secondary endosymbiosis. In accordance with phylogenetic analyses of most plastid genes, phylogenetic trees inferred from 69 ferredoxin sequences show that both the green and the red algal plastid genes arose from cyanobacterial genes; our results furthermore suggest that each of these plastid lineages is related to different extant cyanobacterial genes, implying either that different endosymbiotic events were responsible for the origin of green and red plastids or that each lineage kept only one (and a different one) of several paralogous cyanobacterial genes present in the ancestral cyanobacterial genome.