3.3 Expression Profiles of CssHSP Genes in Response to Stress
The expression pattern of TEA033542 in the tea plant was investigated to understand its response to heat, salt, drought, and MeJA stress and to verify the genomic data. For the basic thermotolerance analysis (Figure4A ), the expression level of TEA033542 was observed to be strongly upregulated after the 40 °C treatment. Protein expression was relatively high in the leaves at 1 h and then was stable. The TEA033542 expression level was observed to be highest after 24 h MeJA treatment (Figure 4B ). However, in the genomic data, the expression level of TEA033542 was observed to be highest at 48 h. The difference may be due to inconsistent processing conditions. After The expression level of TEA33542 during both the 200 mM NaCl and the 25% PEG400 treatments was highest at 36 h (Figure 4C and 4D ). Although the expression pattern of TEA033542 was different from that of the genome, analyses indicated that TEA033542 is involved in responses to heat, salt, drought, and MeJA stress.