WP5: Proteomics analysis in sweet cherry cultivars

Constraints in the estimation of large-scale gene expression profiling, mRNA degradation or inefficiently translation, gene alternative splicing, as well as protein post-translational modifications, processing and protein turnover, make the use of proteomics another essential tool covering the gap between the transcriptome and the metabolome, particularly valuable in the case of non-models plants, such as sweet cherry. The application of more reliable protein extraction methods for fruit tissues, combined with the contribution of EST databases and the new revised approaches (iTRAQ, DIGE, immunoblotting, dMS plus SC, etc.) together with the advances in mass spectrometry (MS)-based proteomics and the availability of powerful search engines provide key tools for wide-proteomic analyses in fruit species. It is therefore interesting to apply comparative proteomics analysis in sweet cherry cultivars in order to characterize distinct quality features as well as the potential interplay between them at gene, metabolite and protein level.