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Characterization of mitochondrial dicarboxylate/tricarboxylate transporters from grape berries

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Abstract

Grape berries (Vitis vinifera L fruit) exhibit a double-sigmoid pattern of development that results from two successive periods of vacuolar swelling during which the nature of accumulated solutes changes significantly. Throughout the first period, called green or herbaceous stage, berries accumulate high levels of organic acids, mainly malate and tartrate. At the cellular level fruit acidity comprises both metabolism and vacuolar storage. Malic acid compartmentation is critical for optimal functioning of cytosolic enzymes. Therefore, the identification and characterization of the carriers involved in malate transport across sub-cellular compartments is of great importance. The decrease in acid content during grape berry ripening has been mainly associated to mitochondrial malate oxidation. However, no Vitis vinifera mitochondrial carrier involved in malate transport has been reported to date. Here we describe the identification of three V. vinifera mitochondrial dicarboxylate/tricarboxylate carriers (VvDTC1-3) putatively involved in mitochondrial malate, citrate and other di/tricarboxylates transport. The three VvDTCs are very similar, sharing a percentage of identical residues of at least 83 %. Expression analysis of the encoding VvDTC genes in grape berries shows that they are differentially regulated exhibiting a developmental pattern of expression. The simultaneous high expression of both VvDTC2 and VvDTC3 in grape berry mesocarp close to the onset of ripening suggests that these carriers might be involved in the transport of malate into mitochondria.

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Abbreviations

AACs:

ADP/ATP carriers

APCs:

ATP-Mg/Pi carriers

CIC:

Mitochondrial citrate carrier

DAF:

Days after flowering

DICs:

Dicarboxylate carriers

DTCs:

Dicarboxylate/tricarboxylate carriers

MCF:

Mitochondrial carrier family

MCs:

Mitochondrial carriers

MSA:

Multiple sequence alignment

OGC:

Oxoglutarate carrier

NCBI:

National Center for Biotechnology Information

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ‘Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia’ (FCT) of ‘Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e do Ensino Superior’ (Portugal) through grant PTDC/AGR-ALI/100636/2008, by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Puglia and by the Italian Human ProteomeNet No. RBRN07BMCT_009. Ana Regalado acknowledges FCT for the financial support through fellow SFRH/BPD/34986/2007. We would like to thank Professor Ferdinando Palmieri for generously providing his laboratory to carry out part of the experimental work. Finally, we would like to thank Prof. Charles Romieu for his scientific advice on grape berry developmental characterization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. da República-EAN, 2780-157, Oeiras, Portugal

    Ana Regalado, Catarina Pimentel, Rita Francisco & Maria M. Chaves

  2. Department of Biosciences, Biotechnology and Pharmacological Sciences, University of Bari, Via E. Orabona 4, 70125, Bari, Italy

    Ciro Leonardo Pierri, Maria Bitetto, Valentina Liliana Laera & Gennaro Agrimi

  3. Instituto Nacional de Recursos Biológicos, I.P., Quinta do Marquês, 2784-505, Oeiras, Portugal

    José Passarinho & Maria M. Chaves

Authors
  1. Ana Regalado
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  2. Ciro Leonardo Pierri
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  3. Maria Bitetto
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  4. Valentina Liliana Laera
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  5. Catarina Pimentel
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  6. Rita Francisco
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  7. José Passarinho
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  8. Maria M. Chaves
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  9. Gennaro Agrimi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gennaro Agrimi.

Additional information

Ana Regalado and Ciro Leonardo Pierri contributed equally to this work.

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Regalado, A., Pierri, C.L., Bitetto, M. et al. Characterization of mitochondrial dicarboxylate/tricarboxylate transporters from grape berries. Planta 237, 693–703 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-012-1786-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-012-1786-8

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