One of the "hottest" areas of current research involves a family of highly conserved stress proteins known as heat shock proteins (HSPs). These proteins are ubiquitous, occurring in all organisms from bacteria, plants and yeast to humans. Abiotic stimuli, such as heat, cold, water deficit, heavy metals, ozone, UV radiation and -irradiation effects the synthesis and accumulation of HSPs. Chloroplast Small Heat Shock Proteins are nuclear-encoded plastid localized HSPs, synthesized in response to heat stress in plants. Recently, it is demonstrated that Cp-sHSPs play an important role to protect...