Genomics to Genetics

Chile is one of the main exporters of fresh fruits from the south hemisphere. Among them, sweet cherries are very important from a commercial point of view. Unfortunately cherries suffer a series of problems such as cracking, which is one of the major reasons for losses in its production. In sweet cherry the damage occurs when the cherries are wetted by rain water. It is hypothesized that the susceptibility to cracking in cherry fruits could be related to structural components of the exocarp and differential gene expression associated with this physiopathology. In collaboration with Washington State University the sweet cherry genome (Stella; 83.5 x coverage) was sequenced. In addition the fruit transcriptomes of three sweet cherry varieties with different susceptibility to fruit cracking (Bing, Lapins and Rainier) was sequenced. 5,124 contigs were assembled from fruit reads and 65% of the contigs were annotated. A transcriptome of the Bing variety under water stress was also generated. A differential expression analysis, based on Digital Northern technique and qPCR, identifing genes that are differentially expressed between the three varieties in fruit was performed. We are trying to verify a potential correlation between differences in amounts of alkanes in fruit wax and gene expression.

This research was supported by CONICYT, FONDECYT/Regular Nº1120261.