Gene regulatory actors involved in fruit development and ripening

Abstract

Fruits are a distinctive features for Angiosperms. They may occur in many different form and shape. Furthermore, fruits are a rich source of supplementary diet, providing various nutrition such as vitamins, minerals, fibers and antioxidants for human. The maturation of fruits is very complex and highly coordinated with developmental process. Maturation process is regulated by thousands of genes controlling events such as gradual softening, or/and lignification of pericarp layers, accumulation of sugars, acids and pigments, releasing of volatile compounds. Gaining a better and deeper understanding of the mechanism behind fruit maturation plays a key role for fruit production and improvement of quality. In this context, a number of genetic actors regulating fruit development and maturation such as microRNA's, transcription factors and long non-coding RNAs (IncRNAs) have been discovered. Nowadays, Clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR-Cas9) which is very effective genom regulatory technique and epigenetic approach are used to determine the molecular mechanisms involved in fruit development. © 2016, Centenary University. All rights reserved.