Transcriptome mapping of tomato fruit development and ripening (Nature Comms)

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is today the main model to study fleshy fruit development. Until now, most tomato growth and ripening studies are focused on a single tissue, the pericarp, and do not take into consideration the development of internal tissues. Shinozaki et al. provide an extensive spatiotemporal transcriptome analysis, with 24,660 unique genes detected, of tomato fruit development and ripening, revealing among other finding, radiating gradients of gene expression.  According to Shinozaki et al., these data, available in the TEA database (http://tea.solgenomics.net) “will facilitate future hypothesis development and research in tomato, and represent a more precise molecular characterization of additional species and development programs”. (Summary by Isabel Mendoza)  Nature Communications 10.1038/s41467-017-02782-9