PPTRAF IS A HEAT TREATMENT-INDUCED RNA CHAPERONE WITH A ROLE AGAINST CHILLING INJURY IN PEACH FRUIT

GISMONDI M. ; GABILONDO J.; BUDDE C.; LARA M.V.; DRINCOVICH M.F.; BUSTAMANTE C.

Mar del Plata

Congreso; LI Reunión de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2015

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Once harvested, peaches [Prunus persica L. Batsch] ripen quickly making refrigeration essential to allow transportation and marketing. However, cold storage can produce chilling injury (CI) symptoms, severely affecting nutritional and organoleptic quality of fruit. Our group has characterized the differential transcriptome, metabolome and proteome of peaches cv. Dixiland subjected to a heat treatment (HT, 3 days at 39 °C), an effective strategy in preventing and/or reducing CI-associated disorders. PpTRAF was identified as one of the HT-induced transcripts and it encodes a TRAF (TNF Receptor-Associated Factor)-type Zn-finger protein with unknown function in plants. We confirmed its HT and cold storage induction in several peach cultivars by RT-qPCR and assessed its molecular function as RNA chaperone through an in vivo bacterial system at low temperatures. The subcellular localization of PpTRAF was predicted in silico (along with some of its orthologs) and determined experimentally by transient transformation of Nicotiana benthamiana leaves to be both cytosolic and nuclear. In addition, PpTRAF protein architecture was compared with the one of its orthologs and its structure was predicted by ab initio modelling. These findings give support to a putative role of PpTRAF in one or more processes of RNA metabolism during the storage of peach fruits at low temperatures.