BackgroundThe oriental melon (Cucumis meloL. var.makuwa) is one of the most important cultivated cucurbits grown widely in Korea, Japan, and northern China. It is cultivated because its fruit has a sweet aromatic flavor and is rich in soluble sugars, organic acids, minerals, and vitamins. In order to elucidate the genetic and molecular basis of the developmental changes that determine size, color, and sugar contents of the fruit, we performedde novotranscriptome sequencing to analyze the genes expressed during fruit development.ResultsWe identified a total of 47,666 of representative loci from 100,875 transcripts and functionally annotated 33,963 of the loci based on orthologs inArabidopsis thaliana. Among those loci, we identified 5,173 differentially expressed genes, which were classified into 14 clusters base on the modulation of their expression patterns. The expression patterns suggested that the differentially expressed genes were related to fruit development and maturation through diverse metabolic pathways. Analyses based on gene set enrichment and the pathways described in the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes suggested that the expression of genes involved in starch and sucrose metabolism and carotenoid biosynthesis were regulated dynamically during fruit development and subsequent maturation.ConclusionOur results provide the gene expression patterns related to different stages of fruit development and maturation in the oriental melon. The expression patterns give clues about important regulatory mechanisms, especially those involving starch, sugar, and carotenoid biosynthesis, in the development of the oriental melon fruit.
Regulation of expression of genes for light-harvesting antenna proteins LH-I and LH-II; reaction center polypeptides RC-L, RC-M, and RC-H; and enzymes of bacteriochlorophyll and carotenoid biosynthesis in Rhodobacter capsulatus by light and oxygen.
