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JXB Advance Access published online on January 6, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany, doi:10.1093/jxb/ern322
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© 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

Expression profiling of ascorbic acid-related genes during tomato fruit development and ripening and in response to stress conditions

Eugenia Ioannidi1 *, Mary S. Kalamaki1 *, Cawas Engineer1 {dagger}, Irene Pateraki1 {ddagger}, Dimitris Alexandrou1, Ifigeneia Mellidou1, James Giovannonni2,3 and Angelos K. Kanellis1,§

1Group of Biotechnology of Pharmaceutical Plants, Division of Pharmacognosy–Pharmacology, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece
2Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Tower Road, Cornell Campus, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
3USDA Plant, Soil, and Nutrition Laboratory, USDA-ARS, Tower Road, Cornell Campus, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

§ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kanellis{at}pharm.auth.gr

L-Ascorbate (the reduced form of vitamin C) participates in diverse biological processes including pathogen defence mechanisms, and the modulation of plant growth and morphology, and also acts as an enzyme cofactor and redox status indicator. One of its chief biological functions is as an antioxidant. L-Ascorbate intake has been implicated in the prevention/alleviation of varied human ailments and diseases including cancer. To study the regulation of accumulation of this important nutraceutical in fruit, the expression of 24 tomato (Solanum lycopersicon) genes involved in the biosynthesis, oxidation, and recycling of L-ascorbate during the development and ripening of fruit have been characterized. Taken together with L-ascorbate abundance data, the results show distinct changes in the expression profiles for these genes, implicating them in nodal regulatory roles during the process of L-ascorbate accumulation in tomato fruit. The expression of these genes was further studied in the context of abiotic and post-harvest stress, including the effects of heat, cold, wounding, oxygen supply, and ethylene. Important aspects of the hypoxic and post-anoxic response in tomato fruit are discussed. The data suggest that L-galactose-1-phosphate phosphatase could play an important role in regulating ascorbic acid accumulation during tomato fruit development and ripening.

Key words: Anoxic and post-anoxic stress, ascorbic acid, biosynthesis, ethylene, gene expression, stress, tomato, Solanum lycopersicon, Ailsa Craig

* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: Institute of Agrobiotechnology, Center for Research and Technology–Hellas, 6th Km Charilaou Thermi Rd, Thermi, Thessaloniki 57001, Greece.

{ddagger} Present address: Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.

Received 13 October 2008; Accepted 12 November 2008


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