title: Genetic regulation and structural changes during tomato fruit development and ripening.
abstract: Fruits are an important evolutionary acquisition of angiosperms, which afford protection for seeds and ensure their optimal dispersal in the environment. Fruits can be divided into dry or fleshy. Dry fruits are the more ancient and provide for mechanical seed dispersal. In contrast, fleshy fruits develop soft tissues in which flavor compounds and pigments accumulate during the ripening process. These serve to attract animals that eat them and disseminate the indigestible seeds. Fruit maturation is accompanied by several striking cytological modifications. In particular, plastids undergo significant structural alterations, including the dedifferentiation of chloroplasts into chromoplasts. Chloroplast biogenesis, their remodeling in response to environmental constraints and their conversion into alternative plastid types are known to require communication between plastids and the nucleus in order to coordinate the expression of their respective genomes. In this review, we discuss the role of plastid modifications in the context of fruit maturation and ripening, and consider the possible involvement of organelle-nucleus crosstalk via retrograde (plastid to nucleus) and anterograde (nucleus to plastid) signaling in the process.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pesaresi
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Mizzotti
authors.affiliation: Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach San Michele all'Adige (Trento), Italy.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Colombo
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Bioscienze, Università degli Studi di Milano Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Masiero
keywords: fruit development; plastid; retrograde and anterograde signaling; ripening; tomato