Gene Big Data: How to make fruits and vegetables better.

Consumers often complain that some vegetables and fruits are not delicious and lack the taste they deserve.
and taste is closely related to loss and distribution and accumulation of secondary metabolites in plants.
chinese scientists have used their research to reveal the secrets that make vegetables and fruits more delicious.
November 28th, U.S. time, Nature Plants published online a paper by Shang Qi, an associate researcher at the Vegetable and Flower Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Huang Sanwen, a researcher, on the convergence of the bitter taste of gourd crops and the evolution of differences.
secondary metabolites are natural compounds produced by plants during their long-term interaction with the outside environment, some with pleasant fragrances, others with bitter taste or toxicity, are plant-synthetic "natural pesticides", used by plants to protect against pests.
In this way, to regain the original taste means that the occurrence of plant secondary metabolites must be precisely regulated, the accumulation of pleasant compounds in the edible parts of the crop, while avoiding the appearance of bitter, astringent substances.
"Because plants contain tens of thousands of metabolites of varying structures, achieving this goal requires a breakthrough in the field of basic research, which has always been the focus and difficulty of research in this field."
," Huang said, the basis for vegetable crop research is weak compared to field crops and model species.
this end, since 2005, Huang Sanwen's research team has been working on the vegetable crop genome, transcription group, variation group and other big data research, hoping to drive the whole vegetable crop basic research through big data research.
, shang's team began to combine big data such as genomes with metabolic research to try to apply big data research to plant secondary metabolic research.
after clarifying the mechanism of biosynthetic, regulation and domestication of cucumber bitter substances, they quickly studied whether similar molecular mechanisms exist in gourd plants such as watermelons and melons.
two years of efforts, Shang's team revealed the molecular mechanisms of the convergence of the bitter characteristics of gourd plants and the evolution of differences.
" to take advantage of this convergence of domestication characteristics, breeders can achieve the watermelon, melon root and fruit bitter taste synthesis for accurate adjustment, on the one hand, to ensure that the fruit does not accumulate bitter substances, to ensure the quality of goods, on the other hand, improve the bitter content of the root used to resist the soil bacteria, pests.
, " Shang explained.
addition, the study used comparative genomics for the first time to clarify the causes of structural nuances between different bitter substances, which provided an important reference for the study of the diversity of plant secondary metabolites with unusually rich structures.
.