Comparative EST transcript profiling of peach fruits under different post-harvest conditions reveals candidate genes associated with peach fruit quality.

Background: Cold storage is used to inhibit peach fruit ripening during shipment to distant markets. However, this cold storage can negatively affect the quality of the fruit when it is ripened, resulting in disorders such as wooliness, browning or leathering. In order to understand the individual and combined biological effects that factors such as cold storage and ripening have on the fruit and fruit quality, we have taken a comparative EST transcript profiling approach to identify genes that are differentially expressed in response to these factors.

JUICE: a data management system that facilitates the analysis of large volumes of information in an EST project workflow.

Background: Expressed sequence tag (EST) analyses provide a rapid and economical means to identify candidate genes that may be involved in a particular biological process. These ESTs are useful in many Functional Genomics studies. However, the large quantity and complexity of the data generated during an EST sequencing project can make the analysis of this information a daunting task.