Fig. 6.

Chloroplast-to-nucleus communication analysis. a Western blot analysis of Lhcb1 protein; equal protein loading was verified by elongation factor (EF-1α) measurements. Histogram (on the right) reports the expression level of Lhcb1 in drought-stressed plants normalized to their control. b Expression of representative nuclear-encoded genes already known as being directly or indirectly involved in retrograde signaling pathways. Transcript level was determined by qRT-PCR after normalization to the elongation factor1-α (EF-1-α) gene as 2^−ΔΔCt. Error bars indicate SD, n = 3. Significant differences were analysed by Student’s t test (^* P ≤ 0.05, ^** P ≤ 0.01). C control, D drought-stressed, CR control-recovered, DR drought-recovered plants