Fig. 7
Darkness-induced leaf senescence and gene expression analysis. a Detached flag leaves from IR64 and spl21 at the heading stage were incubated with normal light (H2O) and darkness (H2O) at 30 °C for 5 d. Scale bar = 1 cm. b Expression profile of senescence genes in IR64 and spl21 at heading stage. c Expression profile of photosynthesis-related genes in IR64 and spl21 at heading stage; the expression level of each gene in IR64 was normalized to 1. Error bars in (b, c) indicate standard deviations of three independent samples. Data are means ± SD of three biological replicates. Single asterisk denotes P ≤ 0.05, and double asterisks denote P ≤ 0.01 (Student’s t-test)