TOMATOMA: A Novel Tomato Mutant Database Distributing Micro-Tom Mutant Collections

Abstract

The tomato is an excellent model for studies of plants bearing berry-type fruits and for experimental studies of the Solanaceae family of plants due to its conserved genetic organization. In this study, a comprehensive mutant tomato population was generated in the background of Micro-Tom, a dwarf, rapid-growth variety. In this and previous studies, a family including 8,598 and 6,422 M2 mutagenized lines was produced by ethylmethane sulfonate (EMS) mutagenesis and γ-ray irradiation, and this study developed and investigated these M2 plants for alteration of visible phenotypes. A total of 9,183 independent M2 families comprising 91,830 M2 plants were inspected for phenotypic alteration, and 1,048 individual mutants were isolated. Subsequently, the observed mutant phenotypes were classified into 15 major categories and 48 subcategories. Overall, 1,819 phenotypic categories were found in 1,048 mutants. Of these mutants, 549 were pleiotropic, whereas 499 were non-pleiotropic. Multiple different mutant alleles per locus were found in the mutant libraries, suggesting that the mutagenized populations were nearly saturated. Additionally, genetic analysis of backcrosses indicated the successful inheritance of the mutations in BC1F2 populations, confirming the reproducibility in the morphological phenotyping of the M2 plants. To integrate and manage the visible phenotypes of mutants and other associated data, we developed the in silico database TOMATOMA, a relational system interfacing modules between mutant line names and phenotypic categories. TOMATOMA is a freely accessible database, and these mutant recourses are available through the TOMATOMA (http://tomatoma.nbrp.jp/index.jsp).

Characterization of a New Pink-Fruited Tomato Mutant Results in the Identification of a Null Allele of the SlMYB12 Transcription Factor

“…Mutant seeds were obtained from mutagenized tomato population (Solanum lycopersicum cv 'MicroTom') developed by Tsukuba University in Japan (TOMATOMA, http://www.tomatoma.nbrp.jp/; Saito et al, 2011). M3 seeds from two mutant lines with a pink fruit phenotype, TOMJPG-4497 and TOMJPG-5663, were used.…”

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) in the service of biotechnology

“…The tomato has sympodial shoots, and it is the only model plant with compound leaves. Furthermore, there exists a large pool of tomato mutants, which were either spontaneous or induced by chemicals or irradiation, that are available at the Tomato Genetic Resource Center (Lozano et al 2009), LycoTill platforms and TOMA-TOMA base (Minoia et al 2010;Saito et al 2011). Over the years, the Botanical and Experimental Garden in the Netherlands has collected the germplasm of the Solanaceae species and preserved extensive ex situ plant collections of tomatoes (Bai and Lindhout 2007).…”

EMS mutagenesis and characterization of Brassica rapa mutants

“…In total, 293 M 2 lines (2188 M 2 plants) were phenotyped and 29 M 2 plants showed phenotypic change in more than one phenotypic categories. As a result, 485 individual mutants were found in 394 mutant lines, and all phenotypes were classified into 8 major categories and 18 subcategories ( Table 1, Saito et al 2011). Figure 2 shows a representative mutant in some of the major categories.…”