Skip Navigation


JXB Advance Access originally published online on July 15, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(12):3433-3442; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp185
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow Supplementary Data
Right arrowOA All Versions of this Article:
60/12/3433    most recent
erp185v1
Right arrow E-letters: Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when E-letters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Yokotani, N.
Right arrow Articles by Kubo, Y.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Yokotani, N.
Right arrow Articles by Kubo, Y.
Agricola
Right arrow Articles by Yokotani, N.
Right arrow Articles by Kubo, Y.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Ripening-associated ethylene biosynthesis in tomato fruit is autocatalytically and developmentally regulated

Naoki Yokotani1, Ryohei Nakano2, Shunsuke Imanishi3, Masayasu Nagata3, Akitsugu Inaba2 and Yasutaka Kubo2,*

1Research Institute for Biological Sciences, 7549-1 Yoshikawa, Kibichuo-cho, Okayama, 716-1241 Japan
2Faculty of Agriculture, Okayama University, Tsushima, Okayama, 700-8530 Japan
3Postharvest Research Team, National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science. National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), 360 Kusawa, Ano, Tsu, Mie 514-2392 Japan

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ykubo{at}cc.okayama-u.ac.jp

To investigate the regulatory mechanism(s) of ethylene biosynthesis in fruit, transgenic tomatoes with all known LeEIL genes suppressed were produced by RNA interference engineering. The transgenic tomato exhibited ethylene insensitivity phenotypes such as non-ripening and the lack of the triple response and petiole epinasty of seedlings even in the presence of exogenous ethylene. Transgenic fruit exhibited a low but consistent increase in ethylene production beyond 40 days after anthesis (DAA), with limited LeACS2 and LeACS4 expression. 1-Methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), a potent inhibitor of ethylene perception, failed to inhibit the limited increase in ethylene production and expression of the two 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) synthase (ACS) genes in the transgenic fruit. These results suggest that ripening-associated ethylene (system 2) in wild-type tomato fruit consists of two parts: a small part regulated by a developmental factor through the ethylene-independent expression of LeACS2 and LeACS4 and a large part regulated by an autocatalytic system due to the ethylene-dependent expression of the same genes. The results further suggest that basal ethylene (system 1) is less likely to be involved in the transition to system 2. Even if the effect of system 1 ethylene is eliminated, fruit can show a small increase in ethylene production due to unknown developmental factors. This increase would be enough for the stimulation of autocatalytic ethylene production, leading to fruit ripening.

Key words: ACS, ethylene, fruit ripening, LeEIL, tomato

Received 11 April 2009; Revised 9 May 2009 Accepted 11 May 2009


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.