Global tissue-specific transcriptome analysis of Citrus sinensis fruit across six developmental stages

Abstract

Citrus sinensis fruit is a type of nonclimacteric fruit that mainly consists of four tissues: the epicarp, albedo, segment membrane and juice sac. The fruit quality is determined by the characteristics of these four tissues. However, our knowledge of the molecular processes that occur in these four tissues during citrus fruit development and ripening is limited. Tissue-specific transcriptomes provide a comprehensive and detailed molecular regulatory network of citrus fruit development and ripening. In our study, we collected four types of tissue from C . sinensis fruits at six developmental stages. A total of 72 libraries were constructed from 24 samples (each sample had three replicates), and the transcriptomes were sequenced by an Illumina HiSeq 4000. The comprehensive analyses of the transcriptomes from the four tissues and six developmental stages presented here provide a valuable resource for the discovery of the molecular networks underlying citrus fruit development and ripening.

High‐spatiotemporal‐resolution transcriptomes provide insights into fruit development and ripening in Citrus sinensis

“…The samples of these four varieties fruits were collected at 45 and 142 days post‐anthesis (DPA). The method for data processing is detailed in our previous publication (Feng et al ., 2019).…”

“…Understanding the hormonal regulation of citrus fruit development and ripening is of considerable academic and agronomic value. Previous studies showed that auxin plays a pivotal role in the regulation of fruit set and growth (Goetz et al, 2007;de Jong et al, 2009;Kang et al, 2013;Pattison et al, 2015). The strict spatiotemporal control of auxin distribution and signalling during fruit development was discovered in Arabidopsis (Sundberg and Ostergaard, 2009), tomato (Pattison et al, 2014) and strawberry (Kang et al, 2013).…”

Should Starch Metabolism Be a Key Point of the Climacteric vs. Non-climacteric Fruit Definition?

“…For apple, there is a similar web site, called AppleMDO, published recently by Da et al ( 2019 ). For collecting grape RNAseq data and making them searchable, a new platform has been created, called Grape-RNA (Wang et al, 2020 ) and for Citrus sinensis a recent data basis has been created too (Feng et al, 2019 ). Mining such databases and others, for other fruit species, with a focus on the few starch synthesis genes, by comparing developing stages of climacteric and non-climacteric fruit, would probably generate new insight into differences between these two fruit classes, and may reinforce the fact that starch should be a cornerstone of the definition of climacteric vs. non-climacteric.…”

Genomic Approaches for Improvement of Tropical Fruits: Fruit Quality, Shelf Life and Nutrient Content

“…Transcriptomics have helped decipher molecular mechanisms and networks governing fruit development and ripening in citrus species [ 90 ]. Late ripening traits in citrus were found to be regulated by TFs such as ERF1, ARF1 and TGA9 involved in ethylene, auxin and salicylic acid signal transduction pathways.…”

“…Cultivar specific metabolome analysis associated with fruit odor and ripening process paved the way for a better understanding of those traits. Flavour related amino acids (cysteine, leucine) and organic acids along with sulphur containing γ-glutamylcysteine and glutathione contribute to the unique odor and taste of durian fruits [ 90 ]. To support this claim, expression of the leucyl aminopeptidase gene ( DzLAP1 ) involved in glutathione metabolism was found upregulated during the unripe, mid-ripe and ripe stages of durian pulp [ 117 ].…”