In recent work, researchers from the Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences characterized the molecular mechanism of color formation in an orange-fruited tomato inbred line, orange fruited tomato3 (oft3). Using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), they found that oft3 fruit had a markedly reduced carotenoid content, as well as a higher β-carotene/lycopene ratio during ripening. Further genetic analysis through crossing experiments suggested that oft3 was controlled by a single recessive gene. Bulk segregant analysis by high-throughput sequencing (BSA-Seq) and fine mapping combined with genome sequence analysis identified SlIDI1, which harbored a 116-bp deletion, as the candidate gene for the oft3 locus. Functional complementation and CRISPR-Cas9 knockout experiments confirmed that SlIDI1 was the causal gene.
Click here for original story, Research suggest that SlIDI1 is involved in tomato carotenoid synthesis in a complex way
Source: Phys.org