and Coordinately Regulated Tomato Ripening by Inhibiting Transcription.

As a typical climacteric fruit, tomato () is widely used for studying the ripening process. The negative regulation of tomato fruits by transcription factor has been reported, but its regulatory network was unclear. In the present study, we screened a transcription factor, , and found it had a stronger relationship with at the early stage of tomato fruit development through the use of transcriptome data, RT-qPCR, and correlation analysis. We inferred that SlERF109-like could interact with SlNAC1 to become a regulatory complex that co-regulates the tomato fruit ripening process. Results of transient silencing (VIGS) and transient overexpression showed that and could regulate chlorophyll degradation-related genes (, , , ), carotenoids accumulation-related genes (, , ), ETH-related genes (, , ), and cell wall metabolism-related genes expression levels (, , , , ) to inhibit tomato fruit ripening. A dual-luciferase reporter and yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) showed that SlNAC1 could bind to the promoter, but SlERF109-like could not. Furthermore, SlERF109-like could interact with SlNAC1 to increase the transcription for by a yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) assay, a luciferase complementation assay, and a dual-luciferase reporter. A correlation analysis showed that and were positively correlated with chlorophyll contents, and negatively correlated with carotenoid content and ripening-related genes. Thus, we provide a model in which SlERF109-like could interact with SlNAC1 to become a regulatory complex that negatively regulates the tomato ripening process by inhibiting expression. Our study provided a new regulatory network of tomato fruit ripening and effectively reduced the waste of resources.