The regulatory network controlling tomato ripening

全球番茄产业价值超过100亿美元。每年生产的西红柿超过1亿公吨，在美国和西欧，就消费量而言，西红柿是人类饮食中最重要的水果。众所周知，富含水果和蔬菜的饮食对人类健康至关重要，可以预防心脏病、中风、高血压和某些癌症。这个项目的重点是与拥有全球番茄业务的先正达公司合作，了解水果质量属性的分子基础。该策略将比较野生型和自然发生的番茄未成熟突变体果实中发生的分子事件。最近发现了这些突变背后的调控基因。挑战是将新兴的调控因子网络与它们的下游效应器联系起来，从而确定各种成熟途径的控制点，例如颜色发育和果实软化。我们将通过分析野生型和突变型番茄果实在果实发育的各个阶段的基因表达和代谢物库来实现这一目标。然后，将使用数学建模技术将监管机构与下游影响和代谢物联系起来，以产生一个初步的监管框架。然后，可以通过沉默转基因植物中选定的转录因子，并确定这如何影响基因表达、代谢物库和成熟的模式，来对这些模型进行实验测试。这将使我们能够建立动态模型来描述这一重要的发展过程。我们的工业合作伙伴将利用这些信息培育改良的番茄品种。

The global tomato industry is worth in excess of $10 billion. More than 100 million metric tonnes of tomatoes are produced each year, and in the United States and Western Europe it is the most important fruit in the human diet in terms of quantity consumed. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is known to be essential for human health providing protection from heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and certain cancers. This project focuses on understanding the molecular basis of fruit quality attributes in partnership with Syngenta, a company with a world wide tomato business. The strategy will be to compare the molecular events occurring in the fruits of wild type and naturally occurring non-ripening mutants of tomato. The regulatory genes underlying these mutations have recently been identified. The challenge is to connect the emerging network of regulatory factors with their down-stream effectors and thereby identify control points for the various ripening pathways, for example, colour development and fruit softening. We will achieve this aim by profiling the gene expression and metabolite pools of wild type and mutant tomato fruit at a wide range of stages of fruit development. Mathematical modelling techniques will then be used to associate regulators with down-stream effects and metabolites, to produce an initial regulatory framework. These models can then be tested experimentally by silencing selected transcription factors in transgenic plants and determining how this affects the patterns of gene expression, metabolite pools and ripening. This will allow us to build dynamic models to describe this important developmental process. Our industrial partner will use the information to breed improved tomato varieties.