Fruit ripening: physiology, signalling, genomics.

Abstract Fruits are important to our dietary requirements as they provide vitamins, minerals, antioxidant and various other molecules important to human health. Ethylene plays a major role in fruit development and ripening. During ripening, various physiological and biochemical changes take place through recruitment of thousands of genes that result in development of colour, taste and flavour. Studies on ethylene signalling has enabled in the identification of various regulators of ripening including ethylene response factors, which are the final player in controlling expression of ethylene responsive (target) genes. Recent developments in Omic approaches such as transcriptomic, genomic, mRNAs sequences, chromatin immune-precipitation, etc. have helped in identifying several target genes, including transcriptional regulators that affect ripening-related changes. The pair identification of microRNA and their target mRNAs as well as the discovery of DNA hypermethylation during fruit ripening open new perspectives in the post-transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of the ripening process. The availability of the genome sequences of many fruit species is fostering the identification of molecular markers and novel regulators of the ripening process.