Variegation in different organ types has been of great interest to biologists. The study of pigment variegation in maize (Zea mays) kernels led to the discovery of transposable elements (McClintock, 1950), whereas the study of eye pigment variegation in Drosophila has led to interesting insights into chromatin regulation (Elgin and Reuter, 2013). Leaf variegation, in which leaves contain both normal and defective chloroplasts, offers an excellent system to study chloroplast biogenesis and anterograde and retrograde signaling. The barley (Hordeum vulgare) mutant albostrians is a classic variegation mutant, and studies on it have stimulated different aspects of chloroplast research (Borner, 2017); however, the underlying gene has been unknown since its initial characterization more than 50 years ago (Hagemann and Scholz, 1962), until now. In this issue of The Plant Cell, Li et al.(2019) have cloned the ALBOSTRIANS (HvAST) gene, which is identical to the