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Process of aging in plants From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Plant senescence is the process of aging in plants. Plants have both stress-induced and age-related developmental aging.[1] Chlorophyll degradation during leaf senescence reveals the carotenoids, such as anthocyanin and xanthophylls, which are the cause of autumn leaf color in deciduous trees. Leaf senescence has the important function of recycling nutrients, mostly nitrogen, to growing and storage organs of the plant. Unlike animals, plants continually form new organs and older organs undergo a highly regulated senescence program to maximize nutrient export.
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Programmed senescence seems to be heavily influenced by plant hormones. The hormones abscisic acid, ethylene, jasmonic acid and salicylic acid are accepted by most scientists as promoters of senescence, but at least one source lists gibberellins, brassinosteroids and strigolactone as also being involved.[2] Cytokinins help to maintain the plant cell and expression of cytokinin biosynthesis genes late in development prevents leaf senescence.[3] A withdrawal of or inability of the cell to perceive cytokinin may cause it to undergo apoptosis or senescence.[4] In addition, mutants that cannot perceive ethylene show delayed senescence. Genome-wide comparison of mRNAs expressed during dark-induced senescence versus those expressed during age-related developmental senescence demonstrate that jasmonic acid and ethylene are more important for dark-induced (stress-related) senescence while salicylic acid is more important for developmental senescence.[5]
Some plants have evolved into annuals which die off at the end of each season and leave seeds for the next, whereas closely related plants in the same family have evolved to live as perennials. This may be a programmed "strategy"[clarification needed] for the plants.
The benefit of an annual strategy may be genetic diversity, as one set of genes does continue year after year, but a new mix is produced each year. Secondly, being annual may allow the plants a better survival strategy, since the plant can put most of its accumulated energy and resources into seed production rather than saving some for the plant to overwinter, which would limit seed production.[citation needed]
Conversely, the perennial strategy may sometimes be the more effective survival strategy, because the plant has a head start every spring with growing points, roots, and stored energy that have survived through the winter. In trees for example, the structure can be built on year after year so that the tree and root structure can become larger, stronger, and capable of producing more fruit and seed than the year before, out-competing other plants for light, water, nutrients, and space. This strategy will fail when environmental conditions change rapidly. If a certain bug quickly takes advantage and kills all of the nearly identical perennials, then there will be a far lesser chance that a random mutation will slow the bug compared to more diverse annuals.[citation needed]
There is a speculative hypothesis on how and why a plant induces part of itself to die off.[2] The theory holds that leaves and roots are routinely pruned off during the growing season whether they are annual or perennial. This is done mainly to mature leaves and roots and is for one of two reasons; either both the leaves and roots that are pruned are no longer efficient enough nutrient acquisition-wise or that energy and resources are needed in another part of the plant because that part of the plant is faltering in its resource acquisition.
This is an oversimplification, in that it is arguable that some shoot and root cells serve other functions than to acquire nutrients. In these cases, whether they are pruned or not would be "calculated" by the plant using some other criteria. It is also arguable that, for example, mature nutrient-acquiring shoot cells would have to acquire more than enough shoot nutrients to support both it and its share of both shoot and root cells that do not acquire sugar and gases whether they are of a structural, reproductive, immature, or just plain, root nature.
The idea that a plant does not impose efficiency demands on immature cells is that most immature cells are part of so-called dormant buds in plants. These are kept small and non-dividing until the plant needs them. They are found in buds, for instance in the base of every lateral stem.
There is little theory on how plants induce themselves to senesce, although it is reasonably widely accepted that some of it is done hormonally. Botanists generally concentrate on ethylene and abscisic acid as culprits in senescence, but neglect gibberellin and brassinosteroid which inhibits root growth if not causing actual root pruning. This is perhaps because roots are below the ground and thus harder to study.
Seed germination performance is a major determinant of crop yield. Deterioration of seed quality with age is associated with accumulation of DNA damage.[6] In dry, aging rye seeds, DNA damages occur with loss of viability of embryos.[7] Dry seeds of Vicia faba accumulate DNA damage with time in storage, and undergo DNA repair upon germination.[8] In Arabidopsis, a DNA ligase is employed in repair of DNA single- and double-strand breaks during seed germination and this ligase is an important determinant of seed longevity.[9] In eukaryotes, the cellular repair response to DNA damage is orchestrated, in part, by the DNA damage checkpoint kinase ATM. ATM has a major role in controlling germination of aged seeds by integrating progression through germination with the repair response to DNA damages accumulated during the dry quiescent state.[10]
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