A MADS-box Gene Necessary for Fruit Ripening at the Tomato Ripening-inhibitor (rin) Locus

Overview

Journal Science

Specialty Science

Date 2002 Apr 16

PMID 11951045

Citations 433

Authors

Julia Vrebalov

Diane Ruezinsky

Veeraragavan Padmanabhan

Ruth White

Diana Medrano

Rachel Drake

Wolfgang Schuch

Jim Giovannoni

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Tomato plants harboring the ripening-inhibitor (rin) mutation yield fruits that fail to ripen. Additionally, rin plants display enlarged sepals and loss of inflorescence determinacy. Positional cloning of the rin locus revealed two tandem MADS-box genes (LeMADS-RIN and LeMADS-MC), whose expression patterns suggested roles in fruit ripening and sepal development, respectively. The rin mutation alters expression of both genes. Gene repression and mutant complementation demonstrate that LeMADS-RIN regulates ripening, whereas LeMADS-MC affects sepal development and inflorescence determinacy. LeMADS-RIN demonstrates an agriculturally important function of plant MADS-box genes and provides molecular insight into nonhormonal (developmental) regulation of ripening.

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