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Cultivated tomato clock runs slow

Nature Genetics volume 48, pages 8–9 (2016)Cite this article

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The plant circadian clock is a complex network of genes crucial for plant survival. A new study finds that domestication gradually slowed down the circadian clock of tomato via selection on two major genes—one that delayed phasing of the clock with daylight, whereas the other induced a longer period.

The modern varieties of tomatoes cultivated around the world all derive from a tiny-fruited wild vine that grows naturally on the slopes of the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes1. Although the exact chronology of tomato domestication during pre-Columbian times remains to be fully elucidated, José Jiménez-Gómez and colleagues have discovered that this process of domestication resulted in a slowing down of the internal clock of the plant2. The circadian clock is the timekeeper by which organisms synchronize their physiology with daily cycles of day/night environmental changes approximately every 24 hours. Jiménez-Gómez and colleagues applied a classic strategy of gene mapping and complementation and combined this with the power of next-generation sequencing to identify a single gene responsible for a shift of up to 3 hours in the daily rhythms of cultivated varieties. They also mapped the genomic location of another gene yet to be identified that slows down the endogenous pace of the clock in domesticated tomato, making it tick up to 2 hours later than in its wild ancestor.

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Figure 1: The two-step process of tomato domestication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Steve A. Kay and Marie-Stanislas Remigereau were previously in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA.,

    Steve A Kay & Marie-Stanislas Remigereau

  2. Steve A. Kay is currently at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.,

    Steve A Kay

  3. Marie-Stanislas Remigereau is currently at Illumina, Inc., San Diego, California, USA.,

    Marie-Stanislas Remigereau

Authors
  1. Steve A Kay
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  2. Marie-Stanislas Remigereau
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Correspondence to Steve A Kay.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Kay, S., Remigereau, MS. Cultivated tomato clock runs slow. Nat Genet 48, 8–9 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3476

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