Abstract
Cherry tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum M.) is considered a healthy fruit worldwide due to its wide range of nutrients. Flavonol, one of the major nutrients in cherry tomato, has antioxidant and cell-modulating properties. In this study, we showed a correlation between the expression of SlMYB12 and flavonol content (R2 = 0.922). To characterize the function of SlMYB12, SlMYB12-overexpressing transgenic tomato plants were generated in three different cherry tomato varieties. Significant increases in flavonol content and flavonol biosynthetic gene expression were identified in SlMYB12-overexpressing plants. Therefore, we suggest that SlMYB12 plays a positive role in the flavonol biosynthesis pathway in cherry tomatoes, which further indicates a potential role as a marker in analyzing flavonol content in different cherry tomato varieties.
Highlights
The MYB family is a large family of transcriptional regulators in plants
By standardizing to fruit skin dry weight, we found that tomato variety Csl[] contains the lowest flavonol contents, including rutin (110.37 μg/g), kaempferolrutinoside (30.15 μg/g) and naringenin chalcone (276.14 μg/g), respectively
The expression of GT was up-regulated approximately 104.27-fold in Csl09-03 transgenic tomato (Csl-T), 3.13- in Micro-Tom transgenic tomato (MT-T) and 3.80-fold in Sheng Nv-Guo transgenic tomato (SNG-T) (Fig. 6F). These results indicated that the overexpression of SlMYB12 increases the expression of biosynthetic genes, which may lead to the increased flavonol contents in different varieties
Summary
The MYB family is a large family of transcriptional regulators in plants. It has been proved that MYB proteins can act as key components in the regulation of specific genes[24]. Showed obviously higher expression in fruit skins, associated with the higher accumulation of flavonol, while SlMYB12 showed lower expression in fresh fruit with lower accumulation[7] These results suggested probable correlations between SlMYB12 and flavonol biosynthesis in tomato. This study presents a potential role of SlMYB12 as a marker to monitor the flavonol content in varieties of cherry tomatoes. We generated SlMYB12-overexpressing transgenic lines in three different cherry tomato varieties driven by the E8 fruit-specific promoter, and the further investigation of these overexpression lines exhibited the potential regulator or target genes that regulated by SlMYB12. The analysis of antioxidant capacity was performed among varieties of cherry tomato cultivars and in three SlMYB12 overexpression lines, and these results further confirmed the potential function of SlMYB12 as a monitoring marker for flavonol content and antioxidant capacity in tomato fruits
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