Fig. 1

Autophagy-related genes are transcriptionally induced in stressed fc2-1 seedlings. The expression of autophagy-related genes was monitored in fc2-1 mutants. A A heatmap of autophagy-related gene expression (relative to wt) in etiolated seedlings at time points prior to (0 min) and during de-etiolation (30 min and 120 min). Microarray data was previously generated from etiolated seedlings grown in the dark for four days and exposed to light for the indicated amount of time [15]. The list of genes considered is presented in Table S1. B Expression fold change (relative to wt) of the top five most up-regulated core autophagy and autophagy genes at 120 min from panel A. C, D, and E RT-qPCR analysis of autophagy-related, core autophagy, and starvation (carbon and nitrogen) marker transcripts, respectively, from four-day-old seedlings grown under 6 h light/18 h dark light cycling conditions. Shown are mean values ± SEM (n = 6 biological replicates). Statistical analyses were performed by student’s t-tests. *, **, *** indicate a p-value of ≤ 0.05, ≤ 0.01, and ≤ 0.001, respectively. In all bar graphs, closed circles represent individual data points