“...our paper is the very first that address the molecular biology of autumn leaves...”

The senescence process in autumn leaves catches the interest of most people every year and is also highly important for the tree, but the process has been neglected by plant molecular geneticists. When reviews about leaf senescence are published they typically start with a reference to autumn leaves, and the journal cover page may even feature a picture of colorful autumn leaves. However, our paper is the very first that addresses the molecular biology of autumn leaves, so it fills what is probably a knowledge gap in the scientific literature.

Not really, it is rather an example of the application of classical molecular biological techniques to a novel research area.

How and why do leaves turn yellow or red in the autumn, and how does the tree know when the autumn comes? Although many non-scientists probably have been thinking of those questions, scientists have not paid much attention to autumn senescence, or at least have not tried to get a mechanistic understanding of the process. We have tried to understand the degradation process in autumn leaves by looking at the genes expressed in such leaves.

One of the main reasons was that we wanted to start a project which, in contrast to most plant physiology and molecular biology research projects, genuinely interests the public. In addition, since very little research has been preformed in this area, we thought that by applying genomics techniques to studies on autumn leaves, perhaps we could produce novel knowledge about a developmental process which is of fundamental importance for plant biology. Another way to phrase this could be that we realized that this was a field where there was no competition.