These results are both interesting and unsurprising at the same time. Firstly unsurprising as the COG proteins are already well known to be important in animals

These results are both interesting and unsurprising at the same time. Firstly unsurprising as the COG proteins are already well known to be important in animals, linked to a whole family of diseases, the congenital disorders of glycosylation. However, this is interesting because it points to the protein(s) we need to consider to understand the aging process in plants (probably some N-glycosylated protein). I would bet this is some misfolding accumulation defect that takes some time to kill the cells.