Fig. 1

Plant growth images for representative transgenic plants and their Western blot analyses. a Iron-fertilized empty vector (EV) transgenic control and the transgenic lines expressing heterologous ferritin secreted extracellularly (FerEX). b Plant heights and shoot dry weights (DWs) of the iron-fertilized EV and FerEX plants at the senescent stage. The percentage values inside the brackets are the increases in height or shoot biomass in FerEX lines compared with the EV control. Values are presented as the mean (±SE) of nine plants for each of the lines. * indicates statistical significance of p < 0.05. c PCR analysis of genomic DNA extracted from FerEX, confirming the integration of ferritin transgene into the genome of the transgenic Arabidopsis lines. d Western blotting of ferritin expression levels in cell-wall protein extracts of plant lines after SDS-PAGE, using polyclonal anti-soybean ferritin antibody. e Western blotting of ferritin expression levels in cell-wall protein extracts of plant lines after native-PAGE, using polyclonal anti-soybean ferritin antibody. The illustrated transgenic lines: FerEX(1) and (2) represent FerEX-8a and -10g, respectively