Senescence: The Compromised Time of Death That Plants May Call on Themselves

Abstract

Plants synchronize their life history events with proper seasonal conditions, and as the fitness consequences of each life stage depend on previous and/or subsequent one, changes in environmental cues create cascading effects throughout their whole life cycle. For monocarpic plants, proper senescence timing is very important as the final production of plants depends on it. Citing available literatures, this review discusses how plants not only may delay senescence until after they reproduce successfully, but they may also bring senescence time forward, in order to reproduce in favored conditions. It demonstrates that even though senescence is part of aging, it does not necessarily mean plants have to reach a certain age to senesce. Experiments using different aged plants have suggested that in interest of their final outcome and fitness, plants carefully weigh out environmental cues and transit to next developmental phase at proper time, even if that means transiting to terminal senescence phase earlier and shortening their lifespan. How much plants have control over senescence timing and how they balance internal and external signals for that is not well understood. Future studies are needed to identify processes that trigger senescence timing in response to environment and investigate genetic/epigenetic mechanisms behind it.