Analysis of Tomato Floral Organ Mutants with Tomato "Whole Gene" Microarray

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has been an excellent model system for analysis of plant mechanism, which cannot easily be studied in Arabidopsis or rice. To obtain information on the genetic mechanism of fruit setting and ripening, we induced mutations in the tomato cultivar 'Micro-Tom' by irradiation with accelerated heavy ions or gamma ray, and screened for associated phenotypes and tried to identify loss-of-function mutations in some genes that involve in the processes. We found four lines whose ovaries and stigmas were bigger in size than those of wild type. And two of these lines set 'cat face' fruit, showing malformations at the fruit's blossom end. We've started to monitor the differences of gene expression level by oligonucleotide-based microarray that generated from whole tomato unigene and consists of over 41,000 probe sets.