Tomato Genome Reveals How Plants Thrive in Wildly Different Environments

Behold the humble tomato. It goes in our sauces and on our pizza. It brightens up salads and goes on our fries. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at the tomato's genetics and have found how different plants manage to thrive in wildly different environments.

"The amazing thing about tomatoes is that they've adapted to grow in wildly different habitats-from right at the coast where they're getting splashed by salt all the way up to 10,000 feet in the Andean desert," said Julin Maloof, one of the researchers, in a news release. "We can also mate and cross them, so they're a great resource to perform genetics."

 In this case, the researchers examined the variation in type, response to live and leaf shape of tomato species. They used RNA sequencing and collected data about the tomato. They completed two transcriptome assembles and improved the annotation for the tomato genome. Then, using iPlant's Atmosphere, which is a cloud service that allows users to operate their own virtual machines, the scientists organized and analyzed the data.

In the end, the researchers managed to understand the genetic basis for structural evolution in the tomato plant. More specifically, they were able to understand the effects that artificial and natural selection had on the trasncriptomes of cultivated and wild species.

"We knew that leaf size would affect photosynthesis, but we found photosynthesis is affected by the shape of the leaf independent of size," said Maloof. "It's a previously unexplored relationship we're trying to tease apart."

The findings don't just reveal more about the tomato plant. It could also help farmers develop better strains of the crop for agriculture.

"Our initial research focused on looking at connections between leaves and how plants grow in response to light," said Neelima Sinha, one of the researchers. "Now we're moving more into how plants respond to stress, and if we can harness those characteristics to make more stress-resistant crops. With the increased variability in climate it is important to develop crops varieties that can better withstand periods of prolonged heat or drought."

The findings are published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

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