Abstract
Fruit ripening is a developmental process that results in the leaf-like carpel organ of the flower becoming a mature ovary primed for dispersal of the seeds. Ripening in fleshy fruits involves a profound metabolic phase change that is under strict hormonal and genetic control. This work reviews recent developments in our understanding of the epigenetic regulation of fruit ripening. We start by describing the current state of the art about processes involved in histone post-translational modifications and the remodeling of chromatin structure and their impact on fruit development and ripening. However, the focus of the review is the consequences of changes in DNA methylation levels on the expression of ripening-related genes. This includes those changes that result in heritable phenotypic variation in the absence of DNA sequence alterations, and the mechanisms for their initiation and maintenance. The majority of the studies described in the literature involve work on tomato, but evidence is emerging that ripening in other fruit species may also be under epigenetic control. We discuss how epigenetic differences may provide new targets for breeding and crop improvement.
Highlights
The fruit is an organ that is unique to the Angiosperms or flowering plants and a true fruit is defined as a mature ovary, accessory tissues can form the bulk of the fleshy fruit tissue in some cases (Seymour et al, 2013)
The decrease in DNA methylation (DDM) observed in fruit pericarp occurred when cell division and endoreduplication is limited, making unlikely a replication dependent passive loss of DNA methylation (Teyssier et al, 2008, Figure 4). This was consistent with locus-specific loss of DNA methylation in ripening-related genes reported by Hadfield et al (1993) who showed a decrease in methylation at the POLYGALACTURONASE (PG) and CELLULASE gene promoters at the onset of tomato ripening and more recently similar changes in the COLORLESS NON-RIPENING (CNR) promoter in the cultivar Liberto (Manning et al, 2006)
Recent work on various plants including Arabidopsis (Zhang et al, 2006; Zilberman et al, 2007; Cokus et al, 2008), rice (Li et al, 2012), maize (Gent et al, 2013), and tomato (Zhong et al, 2013) has demonstrated that remodeling of epigenomes occurs at various stages during plant development
Summary
The fruit is an organ that is unique to the Angiosperms or flowering plants and a true fruit is defined as a mature ovary, accessory tissues can form the bulk of the fleshy fruit tissue in some cases (Seymour et al, 2013). For genes involved in maintenance methylation expression analysis based on microarray data (Figure 4)1 and previous work by Teyssier et al (2008) indicated that MET1, CMTs, and several SlDRMs are most active during early fruit development while
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