Changes in the microsomal proteome of tomato fruit during ripening

Daniela Pontiggia,Giulia De Lorenzo,Claudia Fabbri,Benedetta Mattei,Valerio Licursi,Francesco Spinelli,Rodolfo Negri

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50575-5

Abstract

The variations in the membrane proteome of tomato fruit pericarp during ripening have been investigated by mass spectrometry-based label-free proteomics. Mature green (MG30) and red ripe (R45) stages were chosen because they are pivotal in the ripening process: MG30 corresponds to the end of cellular expansion, when fruit growth has stopped and fruit starts ripening, whereas R45 corresponds to the mature fruit. Protein patterns were markedly different: among the 1315 proteins identified with at least two unique peptides, 145 significantly varied in abundance in the process of fruit ripening. The subcellular and biochemical fractionation resulted in GO term enrichment for organelle proteins in our dataset, and allowed the detection of low-abundance proteins that were not detected in previous proteomic studies on tomato fruits. Functional annotation showed that the largest proportion of identified proteins were involved in cell wall metabolism, vesicle-mediated transport, hormone biosynthesis, secondary metabolism, lipid metabolism, protein synthesis and degradation, carbohydrate metabolic processes, signalling and response to stress.

Highlights

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a crop of high economic and nutritional value produced worldwide and the most widely used model to study different aspects of development and ripening of fleshy fruits[1]
We obtained a proteomic profiling of the microsomal fraction of tomato pericarp at the first and last stage of the ripening process, namely mature green (MG30) and red ripe (R45)[14], respectively, in order to elucidate the most relevant biochemical pathways associated, on the one hand, with the onset of ripening process, and, on the other hand, with the final ripe stage, with a special interest on the pathways related to cell wall metabolism, hormone biosynthesis and the production of aromatic and nutritionally important compounds
Total microsomes were prepared from the pericarp of tomato fruits sampled at 30 and 45 days post-anthesis (DPA) and corresponding to the MG30 and R45 ripening stages, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a crop of high economic and nutritional value produced worldwide and the most widely used model to study different aspects of development and ripening of fleshy fruits[1]. We obtained a proteomic profiling of the microsomal fraction of tomato pericarp at the first and last stage of the ripening process, namely mature green (MG30) and red ripe (R45)[14], respectively, in order to elucidate the most relevant biochemical pathways associated, on the one hand, with the onset of ripening process, and, on the other hand, with the final ripe stage, with a special interest on the pathways related to cell wall metabolism, hormone biosynthesis and the production of aromatic and nutritionally important compounds With this approach, we reliably identified 1315 proteins, among which 145 significantly www.nature.com/scientificreports/. The most significant variations in abundance of microsomal proteins between MG30 and R45 fruits are mainly related to cell wall remodelling, vesicle trafficking, ethylene biosynthesis and lipid metabolism, as well as to glycolysis, gluconeogenesis and TCA cycle

Methods

Results

Conclusion