Project Number: 1907-21000-025-10
Project Type: Nonfunded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Jun 01, 2007
End Date: May 31, 2011

Objective:
The primary objective of the project is to identify and functionally test genes contributing to the biology of the cell wall in developing and ripening fruit. The fruit cell wall impacts important quality traits including texture, flavor, shelf-life and nutritional quality. Resulting genes will serve as candidates for future work in which their potential for effective and efficient manipulation of crop nutritional quality will be tested. 425 for log 31497.

Approach:
We will use fruit of the tomato cultivar Ailsa Craig and from lines nearly isogenic for fruit quality and ripening mutations (rin, nor, Nr) to assay the activity of the transcriptome and proteome during fruit development and ripening. The goal will be to identify proteins that are up-regulated during stages of extensive cell wall metabolism (fruit expansion and ripening) and through comparative transcriptomics to determine which are transcriptionally versus post-transcriptionally regulated. Resulting candidate genes under transcriptional control will be tested for impact on associated cell wall and quality characteristics via altered expression in transgenic tomato plants.