Reprogramming rice leaves: another layer of senescence regulation

How does a leaf switch its gene expression from active photosynthesis to senescence, ending in death of the organ? Making sure this process is tightly regulated is especially important in a major crop such as rice where the remobilization occurring during senescence is critical to the development of the seed and ultimately crop yield. Zhang et al. (2022) now show that epigenetic reprogramming through genome-wide histone H3 acetylation (H3K9ac) has an important role to play in rice leaf senescence