Evaluation of genes involved in watermelon fruit ripening and development

A microarray and quantitative Real-Time PCR-based study was conducted in watermelon [Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai var. lanatus] in order to elucidate the flow of events associated with fruit development and ripening in this species. RNA from three different maturation stages of watermelon fruit, as well as leaf, were collected from field grown plants during three consecutive years, and hybridized to high-density, photolithography microarrays. Keywords: developmental time course, gene expression Overall design: This experiment contained a single biological replicate, two tissue types (leaf, fruit flesh), and three time points (12 days post-pollination, 24 days post-pollination, and 36 days post-pollination. One hundred and twenty-seven genes were chosen from this experiments and used in conjunction with quantitative-PCR to examine two additional biological replications of the experiment.