Image of the Day: Tomato Domestication

Scientists identify a transcription factor that plays a key role in increased fruit size.

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Amutation in the newly identified tomato fruit transcription factor EXCESSIVE NUMBER OF FLORAL ORGANS (ENO) promotes larger flowers and fruit in cultivated tomatoes, according to a study published on March 16 in PNAS.

ENO regulates the activity of a gene that maintains floral stem-cell homeostasis in the meristem, a region near the tips of the roots and shoots of plants that is rich in undifferentiated cells, the authors report in the paper, and a variant in the ENO promoter that was selected for during the domestication of tomatoes has resulted in the large fruits we recognize today.

F.J. Yuste-Lisbona et al., “ENO regulates tomato fruit size through the floral meristem development network,” PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.1913688117, 2020.

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Amy Schleunes
A former intern at The Scientist, Amy studied neurobiology at Cornell University and later earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She is a Los Angeles–based writer, editor, and communications strategist who collaborates on nonfiction books for Harper Collins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and also teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University CTY. Her favorite projects involve sharing the insights of science and medicine.
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