Genome wide transcriptional changes during peach fruit development

Fleshy fruit help in reproduction by developing structures that, reached a given maturity stage, become attractive to animals that, feeding on them, spread the contained seeds in the environment. According to the species, seed development can be at the same pace with the pericarp, or be ready for dispersion before or after the ripening of the fruit. In peach, seed and mesocarp maturation are on pace in mid-season cultivars, while in early ripening ones the seed is not mature at ripening, with the endosperm not yet fully reabsorbed. On the contrary, slow ripening genotypes show the opposite, i.e. a mature seed in a fruit unable to fully ripen. To gain insights on the molecular control of peach fruit development and ripening and on the interactions between the seed and the mesocarp, genome wide transcriptional changes of the two fruit parts have been investigated throughout development from flower anthesis up to commercial ripening in the mid-season cultivar Fantasia. Besides flower, six time points encompassing the four fruit developmental stages were investigated. The dataset consists of thirteen samples (flower, seed at six time points, mesocarp at the same six time points), each with three biological replicates (repA, repB, repC). The experiment is a developmental series, with expression time course analyzed within a single tissue (either seed or mesocarp), excluding, beside flower, data of the other tissue. Gene enrichment analysis has been conducted on genes differentially expressed between following stages of the same tissue. Expression of differentially expressed genes in one tissue have been examined in the other tissue to asses the tissue specificity vs the stage specificity of the regulation.