FUNCTIONAL GAIN OF FRUIT NETTED-CRACKING IN AN INTROGRESSION LINE OF TOMATO WITH HIGHER EXPRESSION OF THE FNC GENE

Highlights

• A novel netted-cracking fruit phenotype was discovered in tomato introgression line IL4-4.

• A single dominant gene (FNC) determined the fruit netted-cracking phenotype.

• The high transcript level of FNC results in the functional gain of fruit netted-cracking and it was found to be a common mechanism in a diverse range of plant species.

Abstract

Fruit cracking is a major disorder that affects the integrity of fruit and reduces the commercial value of tomato and other fleshy fruit. Here, we have found a novel fruit ‘netted-cracking’ (FNC) phenotype in tomato introgression line IL4-4 which is present in neither the donor parent (LA0716) nor the receptor parent (M82). An F₂ population was generated by crossing IL4-4 with M82 to genetically characterize the FNC gene and this showed that a single dominant gene determined fruit netted-cracking. Further map-based cloning narrowed down the FNC locus to a 230 kb region on chromosome 4. Sequencing and annotation analysis show that FNC (Solyc04 g082540) was the most likely candidate gene. Functional characterization of FNC by overexpressing FNC^AC and FNC^IL4-4 resulted in the fruit netted-cracking phenotype, suggesting that the FNC transcript level results in the functional gain of fruit netted-cracking. These findings were further confirmed by FNC ortholog in netted-cracking pepper and melon, indicating a common regulatory mechanism in different plant species. Furthermore, cytoplasm and nucleus-localized FNC indicates increased expression of genes involved in suberin, lignin, lipid transport and cell wall metabolism. These findings provide novel genetic insights into fruit netted-cracking and offer a way to promote molecular improvement toward cracking resistant cultivars.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

fine mapping / fruit netted-cracking / introgression line / transcript level

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2020374 contains supplementary materials (Figs. S1–S6; Tables S1–S3).

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31672149 and 31991182), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFD0101902), and CARS-23-A-03.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Chunli Zhang, Taotao Wang, Jing Li, Danqiu Zhang, Qingmin Xie, Shoaib Munir, Jie Ye, Hanxia Li, Yongen Lu, Changxian Yang, Bo Ouyang, Yuyang Zhang, Junhong Zhang, and Zhibiao Ye declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2020. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)