Transcriptome analysis of the oriental melon (Cucumis meloL. var.makuwa) during fruit development

Abstract

BackgroundThe oriental melon (Cucumis melo L. var. makuwa) is one of the most important cultivated cucurbits grown widely in Korea, Japan, and northern China. It is cultivated because its fruit has a sweet aromatic flavor and is rich in soluble sugars, organic acids, minerals, and vitamins. In order to elucidate the genetic and molecular basis of the developmental changes that determine size, color, and sugar contents of the fruit, we performed de novo transcriptome sequencing to analyze the genes expressed during fruit development.ResultsWe identified a total of 47,666 of representative loci from 100,875 transcripts and functionally annotated 33,963 of the loci based on orthologs in Arabidopsis thaliana. Among those loci, we identified 5,173 differentially expressed genes, which were classified into 14 clusters base on the modulation of their expression patterns. The expression patterns suggested that the differentially expressed genes were related to fruit development and maturation through diverse metabolic pathways. Analyses based on gene set enrichment and the pathways described in the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes suggested that the expression of genes involved in starch and sucrose metabolism and carotenoid biosynthesis were regulated dynamically during fruit development and subsequent maturation.ConclusionOur results provide the gene expression patterns related to different stages of fruit development and maturation in the oriental melon. The expression patterns give clues about important regulatory mechanisms, especially those involving starch, sugar, and carotenoid biosynthesis, in the development of the oriental melon fruit.

Transcriptome profiling of non-climacteric ‘yellow’ melon during ripening: insights on sugar metabolism

“…This characteristic is a developmentally regulated process that is related to gene regulation, hormonal signalling and environmental factors [6,[9][10][11]. Sucrose, glucose and fructose are the major soluble sugars, and sucrose is the predominant sugar in melons at maturity being stored in the vacuoles of the pericarp parenchyma cells [9,12]. Both climacteric and nonclimacteric melons accumulate sugar during fruit ripening [6].…”

Pharmacognostical and Pharmacological Review of Cucumis Melo L. Including Unani Medicine Perspective

“…The KEGG pathwayresults and DEG analysis in the study suggest that genes involved in the glucose and fructosemetabolic pathways were up-regulated early during fruit development (8 DAP), which isconsistent with the previous results. The genes involved in sucrose synthesis were activatedearly in fruit development and subsequently down-regulated from 16 DAP to 32 DAP [34]. The main fatty acids identified so far were linoleic, oleic, palmitic and stearic acids with respective contents 60.1%, 25.3%, 10.1% and 4.5%.…”

Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Two Bottle Gourd Accessions Differing in Fruit Size

“…Recently, transcriptomic sequencing has been used to study the molecular basis of fruit development in many fleshy fruits, including cucumber, melon, and tomato [14,[27][28][29][30][31]. However, most of the studies focused on fruit ripening and quality, and very few specifically investigated genes related to fruit size, at least in Cucurbitaceae species.…”