The shikimate pathway serves the common biochemical route leading to the synthesis of a plethora of aromatic compounds, and is found exclusively in plants, algae, fungi, bacteria and apicomplexa. During this study, a mutational, functional and proteomic approach was used to investigate the role of shikimate kinase in Arabidopsis thaliana. T-DNA insertion lines for three putative SK-encoding genes revealed that a homozygous null mutation in the gene, At3g26900, results in an albino seedling phenotype that is not viable on soil. The albino mutant, termed skl1, is chlorophyll and carotenoid deficient and is impaired in chloroplast biogenesis. Results from in vitro enzyme assays of each of the three SK candidates revealed activity for two of the proteins, SK2 and SK3; however, SKL1 was unable to catalyze the phoshorylation of shikimate. Thus, this work has identified a SK-l&barbelow;ike protein that does not function as a SK, but rather is involved chloroplast biogenesis.