Transcriptome map of Solanum lycopersicum. Solanum lycopersicum

The knowledge of gene functions in model objects is the starting point for the analysis of gene function in non-model species, including economically important ones. Usually the assumptions of gene functions are based on the sequence similarity. In plants, due to a highly intricate gene landscape this approach has limitations. It is often impossible to match directly gene sets from one plant species to the other species based only on their sequences. Thus it is necessary to use additional information to find functionally similar genes. Expression patterns have a great potential as a source of such information. An important prerequisite for the comparative analysis of transcriptomes is the existence of high-resolution expression maps consisting of comparable samples. Here we present a transcriptome atlas of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) consisting of 30 organs and developmental stages. The samples were selected in a way that allowed side-by-side comparison with Arabidopsis thaliana transcriptome map. Newly obtained data are integrated in the database TraVA and are available online http://188.44.46.131/browse/Species=Tomato/, together with the instruments for their analysis. We demonstrate the potential of comparison of transcriptome maps for the inference of expression shifts of paralogous genes.