Peach (Prunus persica) is a typical climacteric fruit that produces ethylene rapidly during ripening, and its fruit softens quickly. Stony hard peach cultivars, however, do not produce large amounts of ethylene, and the fruit remains firm until fully ripe, thus differing from melting flesh peach cultivars. Recently, an article entitled “Application of an antibody chip for screening differentially expressed proteins during peach ripening and identification of a metabolon in the SAM cycle to generate a peach ethylene biosynthesis model” completed by Professor Wang Zhiqiang from Zhengzhou Fruit Research Institute of CAAS.

In this study, to identify the key proteins involved in peach fruit ripening, an antibody-based proteomic analysis was conducted. A mega-monoclonal antibody (mAb) library was generated and arrayed on a chip (mAbArray) at a high density, covering about 4950 different proteins of peach. Through the screening of peach fruit proteins with the mAbArray chip, differentially expressed proteins recognized by 1587 mAbs were identified, and 33 corresponding antigens were ultimately identified by immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry. These proteins included not only important enzymes involved in ethylene biosynthesis, such as ACO1, SAHH, SAMS, and MetE, but also novel factors such as NUDT2. Furthermore, protein–protein interaction analysis identified a metabolon containing SAHH and MetE. By combining the antibody-based proteomic data with the transcriptomic and metabolic data, a mathematical model of ethylene biosynthesis in peach was constructed. Simulation results showed that MetE is an important regulator during peach ripening, partially through interaction with SAHH.

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program [2018YFD1000200], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31872085], and the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (ASTIP) [CAAS-ASTIP-2020-ZFRI].

This work has been published online on Horticulture Research on March 15, 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41438-020-0249-9). More details are available on the link bellow: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41438-020-0249-9

Fig. 1 Construction of peach mAb library and screening of the differentially expressed proteins in ripening peach fruits with MabArray chip.

Fig. 2 Biochemical network of the ethylene biosynthesis pathway during fruit-ripening identified from differential proteomic study with mAbarray.

By Zeng Wenfang (zengwenfang@caas.cn)