Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is cultivated all over the world as annual crop in open field and under greenhouse conditions for both fresh consumption and industrial processing. The nutraceutical properties of tomato are mainly related to the antioxidant potential of the fruit, which is due to the presence of a mix of antioxidant biomolecules like lycopene, ascorbic acid, phenolics, flavonoids and vitamin E. On the other hand, tomato fruits do not normally contain significant concentration of anthocyanins, substances with a well-known nutraceutical value.
The research project carried out in our lab is focused on the study of the synthesis of anthocyanins and other flavonoids in tomato plants with the double aim to characterize the main genetic regulatory factors affecting the biosynthetic pathway in this species and to increase the amount of flavonoids in fruits.
We identified the regulatory genes which control the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway in tomato vegetative tissues and the specific alleles allowing the activation of the pathway in the fruit. Result of these studies was also the production of new varieties of Solanum lycopersicum characterized by purple fruit skin.
In recent years our experimental activities have been mainly addressed towards the characterization of the physiological mechanisms mediating the activation of the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway and triggered by some environmental factors and abiotic stress conditions. Light and temperature represent our major interests due to the conditional phenotypes of the purple fruits, mainly affected by high light and low temperatures. Additionally, the influence exerted on the regulation of the biosynthetic pathway by some developmental signals, particularly linked with photomorphogenesis in vegetative tissues and ripening in fruits, are object of our investigations. Finally, the structure and the composition of the multiprotein MBW transcriptional complex modulating anthocyanin synthesis and accumulation in tomato plants and its interactions with some hormonal signalling pathways as well as its regulation by miRNAs are also studied.
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