Expression data in individual grape berries during ripening initation

We used Affymetrix microarray analyses of thirty-two individual Vitis vinifera cv. Cabernet Sauvignon berries sampled from two clusters at fifty-percent ripening initiation. By delineating four developmental stages of ripening initiation, we demonstrate that color is a statistically significant indicator of transcriptional state during ripening initiation. We report on clustered gene expression patterns which were mined for genes annotated with signal transduction functions in order to advance regulatory network modeling of ripening initiation in grape berries. We also demonstrated that gene expression does not differ statistically significantly at a global level in berries sampled from different plants or different positions in a cluster. Keywords: time course (berry development series) Individual grape berries were selected at 4 developmental stages along ripening initiation for RNA extraction and hybridization to Affymetrix Vitis Genome GeneChips. One goal of this study was to determine the association between the global transcriptome state and phenotypic variables frequently used in berry staging such as color and firmness, so we defined the four time-points (development series) by color/firmness combinations: green hard (GH), green soft (GS), pink soft (PS) and red soft (RS). Individual berries representing each stage were collected from either the distal or the proximal position of one cluster one each of two plants used for experiments.