PuWRKY31 affects ethylene production in response to sucrose signal in pear fruit

Xinyue Li; Wei Guo; Mingyang Xu; Jiaming Zhao; Guan Wang; Hui Yuan; Aide Wang

doi:10.1093/hr/uhac156

PuWRKY31 affects ethylene production in response to sucrose signal in pear fruit

Hortic Res. 2022 Jan 6:9:uhac156. doi: 10.1093/hr/uhac156. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Xinyue Li¹, Wei Guo¹, Mingyang Xu¹, Jiaming Zhao¹, Guan Wang², Hui Yuan¹, Aide Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Fruit Postharvest Biology (Liaoning Province), Key Laboratory of Protected Horticulture (Ministry of Education), National & Local Joint Engineering Research Center of Northern Horticultural Facilities Design & Application Technology (Liaoning), College of Horticulture, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, 110866, China.
² Institute of Soybean, Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 368 Xuefu Road, Harbin, 150086, China.

Abstract

The ripening of climacteric fruits is mainly controlled by the plant hormone ethylene. The regulatory effect of sucrose on ethylene biosynthesis in fruits remains unclear. Here we examined ethylene production in two Ussurian pear (Pyrus ussuriensis) varieties, 'Nanguo' (NG) pear and its bud sport variety (BNG), which has a higher sucrose content. We found that the peak of ethylene release occurred earlier in BNG fruit than in NG fruit during ripening. The expression of the transcription factor PuWRKY31 was higher in BNG fruit than in NG fruit, and was induced by sucrose treatment. Furthermore, PuWRKY31 bound to the promoters of ethylene biosynthetic genes and upregulated their transcription. Our findings suggest a mechanism by which sucrose regulates ethylene biosynthesis in pears.