MaEIL4-MaMADS36-MaACS7 module transcriptionally regulates ethylene biosynthesis during banana fruit ripening

Abstract

The present research examined the regulatory function of MaEIL4 in the ripening process of banana. The findings demonstrated that MaEIL4 is a transcription factor with activity in the nucleus. The transient modulation of MaEIL4 expression in banana fruit slices has been found to exert a significant impact on maturation, either enhancing or inhibiting its progression, as shown by phenotype and endogenous gene expression. MaEIL4, MaMADS36, and MaACS7 were coexpressed in bananas. MaEIL4 interacted with both the MaMADS36 protein and the TGAA box of the MaMADS36 promoter to activate its expression. Moreover, MaMADS36 bound to the C(A/T)rG box of the MaACS7 promoter to regulate fruit ripening. The results have characterized the mechanism of MaMADS36’s response to upstream ethylene signals and established a new module, MaEIL4-MaMADS36-MaACS7, which transcriptionally regulates banana fruit ripening. This research has enhanced our comprehension of the pivotal function of MaMADS36 in controlling fruit maturation and thus suggests new strategies for fruit shelf life improvement and postharvest loss reduction.

Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Founda-tion of China (NNSFC, No. 31872161; 32172269), the National Key R & D Program of China (No. 2023YFD2300801), the Hainan Province Science and Technology Special Fund (ZDYF2023XDNY179), the project of the National Key Laboratory for Tropical Crop Breeding (No. NKLTCB202301), and China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA (No. CARS-31-03). We thank LetPub (www.letpub. com.cn) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript. We thank the Public Technology Research and Sharing Center of the Instituteof Tropical Bioscience and the Biotechnology Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences for equipment sharing and technical support.

Author contributions

J.L. and J.X. designed the project and wrote this paper. M.F., Y.Z., J.Z., and C.D. performed the experiments, analyzed the data, and prepared figures. J.B.Z., C.J., H.M., J.W., Z.J., X.L., and S.Z. contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools and reviewed the drafts of this paper. M.F., Y.Z., J.Z., and C.D. contributed equally to this work.

Data availability

All experimental data are available and accessible via the main text and/or the supplemental data. Accession number: PRJNA343716.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interests.

Supplementary Data

Supplementary data is available at Horticulture Research online.

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