Fig. 4

Responses of wild type (WT) and transgenic (TG) plants to heat stress. Two-week-old Arabidopsis thaliana WT and four AsHSP26.8a TG lines were grown under normal conditions in a growth chamber (a). Heat stress was applied by heating the plants to 40 °C for 2 d (b). The plants were then moved back to normal conditions, photographed 2 and 4 d after recovery (c and d). Leaf samples collected 2 d after heat stress were used for measuring electrolyte leakage (e), relative water content (f) and chlorophyll a content (G left), Chlorophyll b content (G middle) and total chlorophyll content (G right) (n = 3). Each column represents mean of three biological replicates. Error bars represent SE. ‘*’ or ‘**’ indicate significant differences between TG and WT plants at P < 0.05 or 0.01, respectively by Student’s t test