Abstract
Mature pepper (Capsicum sp.) fruits come in a variety of colors, including red, orange, yellow, brown, and white. To better understand the genetic and regulatory relationships between the yellow fruit phenotype and the capsanthin-capsorubin synthase gene (Ccs), we examined 156 Capsicum varieties, most of which were collected from Northwest Chinese landraces. A new ccs variant was identified in the yellow fruit cultivar CK7. Cluster analysis revealed that CK7, which belongs to the C. annuum species, has low genetic similarity to other yellow C. annuum varieties. In the coding sequence of this ccs allele, we detected a premature stop codon derived from a C to G change, as well as a downstream frame-shift caused by a 1-bp nucleotide deletion. In addition, the expression of the gene was detected in mature CK7 fruit. Furthermore, the promoter sequences of Ccs from some pepper varieties were examined, and we detected a 176-bp tandem repeat sequence in the promoter region. In all C. annuum varieties examined in this study, the repeat number was three, compared with four in two C. chinense accessions. The sequence similarity ranged from 84.8% to 97.7% among the four types of repeats, and some putative cis-elements were also found in every repeat. This suggests that the transcriptional regulation of Ccs expression is complex. Based on the analysis of the novel C. annuum mutation reported here, along with the studies of three mutation types in yellow C. annuum and C. chinense accessions, we suggest that the mechanism leading to the production of yellow color fruit may be not as complex as that leading to orange fruit production.
Highlights
Plants have colored flowers and fruits to attract insects or other animals acting as pollinators and seed dispersers [1]
We found that CK7, which is a C. annuum species, shares low genetic similarity with other yellow C. annuum varieties
Since six lines with yellow ripe fruit were local peppers, cluster analysis was necessary to identify the genetic relationship between these lines and to determine which Capsicum species these lines belong to
Summary
Plants have colored flowers and fruits to attract insects or other animals acting as pollinators and seed dispersers [1]. The Capsicum genus, which is generally accepted to originate in South America, comprises 25–30 species [2]. Five of these species have been domesticated, including C. annuum, C. baccatum, C. chinense, C. frutescens and C. pubescens. The wild progenitor of C. annuum is thought to be the bird pepper, whose fruit is small and red when ripe [2]. The ripe color of pepper has undergone selection during domestication, which has resulted in some new phenotypes, including yellow, orange, brown and even white fruits, which are found in all cultivated pepper species [3]. Since diverse colors (from white to red) can found across Capsicum varieties, pepper has become a good model system for studying the mechanism of fruit color change [3]
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