Fall, the season of colors: Leaves turn red, yellow, and brown. The disappearance of the color green and the simultaneous appearance of these other colors are also signs of ripening fruit.
A team led by Bernhard Kräutler at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) has now determined that the breakdown of chlorophyll in ripening apples and pears produces the same decomposition products as those in brightly colored leaves. As the researchers report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, these colorless decomposition products, called nonfluorescing chlorophyll catabolytes (NCC), are highly active antioxidants - making them potentially very healthy.
The beautifully colored leaves of fall are a sign of leaf senescence, the programmed cell death in plants. This process causes the disappearance of chlorophyll, which is what gives leaves their green color. For a long time, no one really knew just what happens to the chlorophyll in this process. In recent years, Kräutler and his team, working with the Zurich botanists Philippe Matile and Stefan Hörtensteiner, have been able to identify the first decomposition products: colorless, polar NCCs that contain four pyrrole rings - like chlorophyll and heme.