Figure 3

Chlorophyllide formation during pigment extraction from senescent or MeJA-treated leaves. Pigments extracted from mature leaves (7th to 9th leaves counting from the bottom of the plant) of wild-type (WT) Arabidopsis plants under four different conditions: leaves collected from 4-week-old plants (“mature”), leaves from 8-week-old plants (“senescent”), leaves from 4-week-old plants where the removed leaves were incubated in complete darkness on filter paper saturated with 3 mM MES buffer (“dark”) or the same buffer plus 50 μM MeJA (“dark-MeJA”). Pigments were extracted by immersing the leaves in pure acetone that was cooled to 4°C and the extracts were subsequently analyzed by HPLC (see the Methods section for detail). A. Levels of chlorophyll a and chlorophyllide a per gram fresh weight of leaves. B. Chlorophyllide a levels in sample extracts expressed as the ratio of chlorophyllide a to the sum of chlorophyll a and chlorophyllide a. Chl a, chlorophyll a. Chlide a, chlorophyllide a. Error bars indicate standard deviations. Sample size, n = 3. C. The photograph below the bar graphs illustrates the 4-week-old (left) and 8-week-old (right) leaves used in these analyses.