Co-Authors:
Moy, M., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Dai, N., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Cohen, S., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Hadas, R., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Granot, D., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Petrikov, M., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Yeselson, Y., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Shen, S., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Schaffer, A.A., Department of Vegetable Research, Volcani Center, Agricultural Research Organization, Bet Dagan 50250, Israel
Abstract:
The cultivated tomato Lycopersicon esculentum and its closely related red-and orange-fruited species L. pimpinellifolium and L. cheesmanii accumulate hexose monosaccharides in the mature fruit, in contrast to the green-fruited wild species (L. hirsutum, L. chmielewskii, L. pennellii, L. peruvianum), which accumulate the disaccharide sucrose. The different metabolic patterns are determined at the transcriptional level of the TIV gene, which encodes soluble acid invertase. The hexose accumulators show a developmental rise in TIV transcription while the sucrose accumulators are characterized by a cessation of TIV expression during fruit development. In this paper, we report the multi-species promoter sequence comparison of six species representing the two sugar accumulation patterns. The multi-species comparison highlights the presence of a copia-like retrotransposon upstream of the transcription initiation site in the red-and orange-fruited species, which is absent in the more primitive green-fruited species. This indicates that the molecular evolutionary event of transposon insertion in the TIV locus occurred with the divergence of the red-and orange-fruited Eulycopersicon subgenus from the green-fruited Eriopersicon subgenus, which is suggested to have taken place -1 million years ago.