Senescence is not only an important developmental process, but also a responsive regulation to abiotic and biotic stress for plants. Stay-green protein plays crucial roles in plant senescence and chlorophyll degradation. However, the underlying mechanisms were not well-studied, particularly in non-model plants. In this study, a novel stay-green gene, ZjSGR, was isolated from Zoysia japonica. Su...

Chlorophyll degradation is an intricate process that is critical in a variety of plant tissues at different times during the plant life cycle. Many of the photoactive chlorophyll degradation intermediates are exceptionally cytotoxic necessitating that the pathway be carefully coordinated and regulated. The primary regulatory step in the chlorophyll degradation pathway involves the enzyme pheoph...

This study reveals by in vivo deuterium labeling that in higher plants chlorophyll (Chl) b is converted to Chl a before degradation. For this purpose, de-greening of excised green primary leaves of barley (Hordeum vulgare) was induced by permanent darkness in the presence of heavy water (80 atom % (2)H). The resulting Chl a catabolite in the plant extract was subjected to chemical degradation b...

Degreening, due to the net loss of chlorophyll (Chl), is the most prominent symptom during the processes of leaf senescence, fruit ripening, and seed maturation. Over the last decade or so, extensive identifications of Chl catabolic genes (CCGs) have led to the revelation of the biochemical pathway of Chl degradation. As such, exploration of the regulatory mechanism of the degreening process is...

Iron (Fe) deficiency is one of many conditions that can seriously damage crops. Low levels of photosynthesis can lead to the degradation of chlorophyll content and impaired respiration in affected plants, which together cause poor growth and reduce quality. Although ethylene plays an important role in responses to Fe deficiency, a limited number of studies have been carried out on ethylene resp...

Chlorophyll analysis at high precision and accuracy is limited by the lack of suitable, commercially available internal standards for HPLC analysis. Here, the commercially available dye zinc-phthalocyanine is presented as a new internal standard to quantify chlorophylls in vegetable foods and to detect chlorophyll degradation products. The technique was applied to chlorophyll analysis of a sele...