Functional Genomics for the Study of Fruit Ripening and Quality: Towards an Integrative Approach - Fruit Ripening: Physiology, Signalling and Genomics - page 308

18 Functional Genomics for the Study of
Fruit Ripening and Quality: Towards an
Integrative Approach

Federico Martinelli 1,2 and Abhaya Dandekar 3 *
1 Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie e Forestali, University of Palermo,
Palermo, Italy; 2 Istituto Euro Mediterraneo di Scienza e Tecnologia,
Palermo, Italy; 3 Department of Plant Sciences, University of
CaliforniaDavis, CA, USA

18.1 Introduction

were used to discover genes with potential
roles in fruit development. In apple, EST
sequencing was employed to study the
molecular regulation of fruit growth and
development (Park et al. , 2006).
Emerging genomics tools and ap-
proaches have added new candidate genes
to expand the known fruit-ripening
regulatory network. Ripening is infl uenced
by internal and external factors, including
developmental gene regulation, hormones,
light and temperature. Until recently,
studies at the molecular level were focused
on the role and regulation of ethylene
biosynthesis (Adams-Phillips et al. , 2004).
Fruits are generally categorized as fl eshy
or dry. Fleshy fruits typically undergo
ripening, while dry fruits such as cereals
and legumes mature in a process more
similar to senescence, dispersing their
seeds using abscission-like processes. The
model plant Arabidopsis has provided
insights into the molecular regulation of
the early steps in fruit formation and
development (Adams-Phillips et al. , 2004),
although it does not produce fl eshy ripe

Fruit development is controlled by gen-
etically programmed processes infl uenced
by environmental factors. Different 'omics'
approaches (deep sequencing, microarray
analysis, suppression subtractive hybrid-
ization) have identifi ed and characterized
genes involved in this process in several
fruit species. The mass of knowledge con-
cerning transcriptional regulatory networks
affecting important physiological and
developmental processes has expanded in
the last two decades.
Expressed sequence tag (EST) sequen-
cing uses microarray technology and real-
time PCR to generate comprehensive data
for functional genomics studies. Following
the pioneering work of Aharoni and co-
workers (2000) on strawberry, microarrays
have been used in many different fruit
species. In tomato, large-scale EST se-
quencing projects have clarifi ed molecular
mechanisms of fruit ripening and
identifi ed important transcription factors
(Moore et al. , 2002). In grape berry, ESTs