ศูนย์นวัตกรรมเทคโนโลยีหลังการเก็บเกี่ยว

Gain and loss of fruit flavor compounds produced by wild and cultivated strawberry species

Bouwmeester H.J.; Giri A.P.; Verstappen F.W.A.; Bertea C.M.; Sevenier R.; Sun Z.; Jongsma M.A.; Schwab W. and Aharoni A.

5th International Postharvest Symposium . Volume of Abstract . Verona, Italy 6-11 June 2004, p.129

2004

บทคัดย่อ

The blend of flavor compounds produced by fruits serve as biological perfumes, used for the attraction of living creatures including human beings. These volatile mixtures include hundreds of metabolites and vary in their composition in different characteristic fruit flavors. The mechanism by which natural plant compounds such as flavors are gained and lost during evolution and domestication are largely unknown.

Here, we reveal a process for the evolution of diversity in strawberry fruit flavor components based o­n a change in enzyme localization and alteration in gene expression profile. Through a change in subcellular localization the enzymes encountered new substrates and produced novel metabolites characteristic of the polyploid strawberry cultivars of today. At the same time we discovered that an insertion mutation affected gene expression and caused the loss of other flavor compounds, typical of wild strawberries. Loss of a certain metabolite further influences the metabolite profile of the same plant species by initiating a metabolic chain reaction, in which substrates are no more available for the production of downstream compounds.

The findings uncover molecular evolutionary mechanisms used by plants to generate metabolic diversity, which may be specifically selected for in domesticated species.