Controlled ripening and increased storage life of fruit and vegetables through ethylene control

• Research unit: EU RFP
• Project number: 95.0865

Key words (English)

ethylene; biotechnology; fruit ripening; vegetables; signal transduction

Alternative project number (English)

EU project number: FAIR-CT95-0225

Research programs (English)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 4.3 Biomedical/Health research

Short description (English)

See abstract

Partners and International Organizations (English)

Profs. Woltering, Pech, Grierson, Kanellis, Dortoglu, Hosemans, Tardieu, Papamethakis

Coordinator: Dienst Landbouwkundig Ouderzoek (NL)

Abstract (English)

Plant cells respond with increased production of the stress hormone ethylene when treated with elicitor preparations. The response involves a rapid increase in activity of 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) synthase, the enzyme catalyzing the first step of ethylene biosynthesis. In some cases, the induction of this enzyme activity occurs at the posttranscriptional level and can be interrupted by removal of the elicitor or by the addition of protein kinase inhibitors.
To elucidate factors involved in elicitor-induced posttranscriptional ACC synthase (ACS) regulation, particularly its stability and a possible role of the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway we transformed suspension cultured plant cells with a cDNA encoding ACS under the control of a strong constitutive promoter. The transformed cell lines produced increased amounts of ACC and ethylene, but were strongly selected against overexpression of the transgene. Therefore, our future work will involve the use of an inducible promoter. Similar studies were conducted in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, using an inducible promoter system to heterologously express ACC synthase in wild type and mutant strains with a defective proteasome. The proteasome mutations did not affect the stability of ACS in this system. Moreover, elicited plant cells were treated with the highly efficient proteasome inhibitor MG132. These plant cells showed a strong increase of ACS activity, suggesting a possible role of the proteasome in the regulation of ACC synthase and the production of ethylene.

References in databases (English)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 95.0865