Metabolic adjustments required for extended leaf longevity under prolonged darkness revealed by a new loss of function allele of PIF5

Senescence is regulated by a complex interplay of factors and regulatory circuits, which may be accelerated or delayed depending on the integrated signals. Using a forward genetic screen in Arabidopsis thaliana, we identified a mutant strongly delayed in its induction of senescence in response to prolonged darkness. This mutant, which corresponds to a novel loss-of-function allele of PIF5 (PHYTOCHROME-INTERACTING FACTOR 5), exhibits even slightly more extended survival of leaves in darkness than the previously reported pif5-3 TDNA knock-out line. In the present study, we additionally aimed at deciphering the metabolic and regulatory processes conferring this enhanced capacity for survival in pif5 mutants. We combined physiological, metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses, and discovered that the extended survival of mutant leaves in darkness was associated with reduced protein degradation, slight differences in amino acid catabolism related gene expression as well as strong reduction of amino acid transporter expression, which coincided with enhanced amino acid accumulation. Our findings suggest that enhanced survival in darkness could be mediated by moderate levels of protein degradation allowing build up and slow usage of amino acids as alternative respiratory substrates, while during irreversible senescence, strong degradative processes, together with enhanced amino acid transport either to the site of their metabolization inside the leaf, or to other organs in the plant, could promote the fast progression of senescence and antagonize survival. Comparative metabolomics and gene expression analyses suggested that the senescence regulatory network downstream of PIF5 organizes these irreversible stages of leaf senescence, promoting autophagy and amino acid export, possibly by direct binding of important senescence promoting factors like ORE1 to the promoters of some of the involved genes. The failure to induce these later stages may prolong the reversible phase of d