Senescence is the last stage of development of a leaf, and is marked by a progressive degradation of cellular components and their recycling to other organs of a plant. We recently performed a transcriptomic analysis of leaf senescence in the legume model Medicago truncatula. Changes in gene expression reflected the profound physiological rearrangement and provided intriguing clues for the involvement of some of the members identified, which await future investigation. The resulting data also revealed similarities and differences with Arabidopsis leaf senescence.
Keywords: Medicago truncatula; cDNA-AFLP; leaf; legume; senescence; transcriptome.