National Bioresource Project-Tomato in Japan : Collection of Micro-Tom Mutants and Fruit Metabolic Profiles

Tomato is an excellent model plant for fruit biology research and for genomic studies of the Solanaceae family, which is consisting of potato, eggplant, pepper and so on. To facilitate breeding and functional genomics research of tomato, we launched on the tomato bioresource program in 2007 within the framework of the National BioResource Project (NBRP) in Japan. The major purpose of the NBRP-tomato is to collect, preserve and provide tomato bioresources including major experimental lines, mutant lines, transgenic lines and cDNA collections. We have chosen a cultivar Micro-Tom as a model system that has advantages as a model plant due to its small plant size, a short life cycle and the availability of functional genomics tools.In this study, we have generated >12,000 mutant lines by ethylmethanesulfonate (EMS) treatment and gamma-ray irradiation. In these mutant collections, 1,753 individual mutants with visible phenotype have been isolated so far. All of the visible phenotyping data and other associated data were registered with the database ‘TOMATOMA’ (http://tomatoma.nbrp.jp/). For enhancement of the quality of the mutant resources, we are profiling metabolic components of tomato fruits including amino acid composition, carotenoid contents and Brix values, and the data will be added to TOMATOMA soon. The metabolite information will support further acceleration of tomato fruits researches. In addition to the mutant resources, full-length 5’-ESTs sequences and materials are available through the ‘KafTom’ (http://www.pgb.kazusa.or.jp/kaftom/) and ‘MiBASE’ (http://www.pgb.kazusa.or.jp/mibase/). Furthermore, a reference genome sequence of Micro-Tom will be available through ‘TOMATOMICS’ (http://bioinf.mind.meiji.ac.jp/tomatomics/). These tomato resources will speed up research and development of tomato and fleshy fruits.