Systems approach for exploring the intricate associations between sweetness, color and aroma in melon fruits

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Yaakov Tadmor¹  Elad Oren¹  Efraim Lewinsohn¹  Einat Bar¹  Shiri Freilich¹  Ayala Meir¹  Shery Lev¹  Guy Wissotsky¹  Nurit Katzir¹  Eli Reuveni¹  Galil Tzuri¹  Joseph Burger¹  Arthur Schaffer¹  Itay Gonda¹  Vitaly Portnoy¹  Navot Galpaz²  Marc Lohse³  Zhangjun Fei⁴  James Giovannoni⁴ 

[1] Newe Ya’ar Research Center, Agricultural Research Organization, 30095, Ramat Yishay, Israel;Newe Ya’ar Research Center, Agricultural Research Organization, 30095, Ramat Yishay, Israel;Migal Research Institute, 11016, Kiryat Shmona, Israel;Targenomix GmbH, Potsdam, Germany;USDA-ARS and Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA;

关键词: Fruit quality;    Specialized metabolites;    Metabolomic;    Transcriptomic;    Correlation analysis;    Recombinant inbred lines;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12870-015-0449-x

 received in 2014-11-11, accepted in 2015-02-04,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMelon (Cucumis melo) fruits exhibit phenotypic diversity in several key quality determinants such as taste, color and aroma. Sucrose, carotenoids and volatiles are recognized as the key compounds shaping the above corresponding traits yet the full network of biochemical events underlying their synthesis have not been comprehensively described. To delineate the cellular processes shaping fruit quality phenotypes, a population of recombinant inbred lines (RIL) was used as a source of phenotypic and genotypic variations. In parallel, ripe fruits were analyzed for both the quantified level of 77 metabolic traits directly associated with fruit quality and for RNA-seq based expression profiles generated for 27,000 unigenes. First, we explored inter-metabolite association patterns; then, we described metabolites versus gene association patterns; finally, we used the correlation-based associations for predicting uncharacterized synthesis pathways.ResultsBased on metabolite versus metabolite and metabolite versus gene association patterns, we divided metabolites into two key groups: a group including ethylene and aroma determining volatiles whose accumulation patterns are correlated with the expression of genes involved in the glycolysis and TCA cycle pathways; and a group including sucrose and color determining carotenoids whose accumulation levels are correlated with the expression of genes associated with plastid formation.ConclusionsThe study integrates multiple processes into a genome scale perspective of cellular activity. This lays a foundation for deciphering the role of gene markers associated with the determination of fruit quality traits.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Freilich et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015