Recently, the Tobacco Functional Genome Innovation Team in Tobacco Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has made important progress in the mechanism of plant senescence regulation. They revealed the biological function of transcription factor DEAR4 involving in plant leaf senescence, and the related research results is published in the journal of Frontiers in Plant Science.

Leaf senescence is a programmed developmental process regulated by various endogenous and exogenous factors. Effectively controlling leaf senescence in agricultural production is of great significance to improve the yield and quality of major crops and prolong the fresh-keeping period of fruits and vegetables. In this research, we found that the transcription factor DEAR4 can participate in the regulation of leaf senescence and the response of plants to stress. This study has provided a theoretical basis for revealing the important role of DEAR4 in plant adaptation.

The Tobacco Functional Genome Innovation Team have analyzed the molecular mechanism of leaf senescence by the methods of omics mining, gene regulatory network and mutant screening. Moreover, they summarized the research methods of plant senescence for the first time, and conduct related research on artificial intervention of leaf senescence with the method of peptide hormones, small molecule compounds and inducible promoter. The research results have been published in the journal of Methods and Protocols-Plant Senescence、Scientific Reports and Frontiers in Plant Science.

More details are available in the link below:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.00367/full