Unraveling tomato ripening: roles and contributions of transcription factors in ripening regulation

Summary

Ripening is a key-trait for fleshy fruit-bearing plants as it is important in both physiological and agricultural contexts. Investigations in the past 20 years revealed a number of genes encoding transcription factors (TFs) acting as upstream regulators of ripening, and thus regarded as ripening master regulators. However, subsequent re-evaluations revealed that ripening still occurs in the knockout mutants of these TF-encoding genes, leading to the alternative hypothesis that ripening is regulated by a network of multiple TFs in additive and/or redundant ways. This thesis investigates the roles and contributions of several TFs from the NAC, MADS and GRAS families in regulating fruit ripening in tomato.