During ripening of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) fruit, chloroplasts develop into chromoplasts. The chloroplast-chromoplast transition is marked by the accumulation of carotenoids and the disappearance of chlorophyll, the degradation of the highly structured thylakoid membrane system, and a reduction in the levels of proteins and mRNAs associated with photosynthesis. In the tomato mutant green flesh (gf), detectable amounts of chlorophyll remain in the ripe, mutant fruit, giving rise to a rusty red fruit color and suggesting that at least chlorophyll degradation is defective in the mutant. We show here that the ultrastructure of the plastids in the ripe gf fruit maintained significant amouonts of the chloroplast thylakoid grana along with structures characteristic of tomato chromoplasts. The maintenance of chloroplast structure in the gf ripe fruit was paralleled on the molecular level by the retention of plastid photosynthetic components that normally decline significantly in ripening tomato fruits. These included the light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding proteins of photosystem II, the second electron accepting plastoquinone of photosystem II binding protein, the large and small subunits of ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, the 33-kD oxygen evolution protein, and cytochrome b559. Similarly, photosynthetic transcripts, cab, psbA, rbcL, rbcS, and psbE mRNAs, also accumulated to higher levels in ripening gf fruit than wild type. It is interesting that the levels of some of these transcripts, especially cab mRNA, were noticeably higher in the mature gf green fruit than in the corresponding wild-type fruit. This suggests that the onset of the effect from the gf mutation might be earlier than fruit ripening. We also observed that when chloroplast formation was blocked during the development and ripening of gf fruit, these mutant fruits were bright red and their chromoplasts were indistinguishable from those found in wild-type ripe fruits grown and ripened either in the dark or in the light. These results suggest that the lesion in gf may alleviate conditions associated with chloroplast deterioration during the chloroplast-chromoplast transition in tomato ripening but has no direct effect on chromoplast differentiation per se. The ultrastructure of gf provides unequivocal evidence that, in ripening tomato, chromoplasts indeed differentiate from preexisting chloroplasts; on the other hand, chromoplast differentiation in the dark-matured and -ripened tomato fruits indicates that chromoplast development can be a process entirely independent of the chloroplasts.

The chlorophyll retainer (cl) mutation causes inhibition of chlorophyll degradation during pepper fruit ripening and is controlled by a single recessive gene. The retention of chlorophyll in mature red or yellow fruits produces brown- or green-colored ripe fruits, respectively. We mapped CL on chromosome 1 of pepper corresponding to chromosome 8 in tomato in which a homologous mutation, green flesh, was previously assigned. To test whether known structural genes from the chlorophyll catabolism pathway could correspond to CL, we mapped tomato expressed sequence tag clones corresponding to three loci of CHLOROPHYLLASE and one locus of PHEOPHORBIDE A OXYGENASE in the tomato introgression lines population. The three CHLOROPHYLLASE loci mapped to chromosomes 6, 9, and 12, while PHEOPHORBIDE A OXYGENASE mapped to chromosome 11, indicating that CL may correspond to an as yet unavailable gene from the chlorophyll catabolism pathway or to a regulator of the pathway.

Color changes often accompany the onset of ripening, leading to brightly colored fruits that serve as attractants to seed-dispersing organisms. In many fruits, including tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and pepper (Capsicum annuum), there is a sharp decrease in chlorophyll content and a concomitant increase in the synthesis of carotenoids as a result of the conversion of chloroplasts into chromoplasts. The green-flesh (gf) and chlorophyll retainer (cl) mutations of tomato and pepper, respectively, are inhibited in their ability to degrade chlorophyll during ripening, leading to the production of ripe fruits characterized by both chlorophyll and carotenoid accumulation and are thus brown in color. Using a positional cloning approach, we have identified a point mutation at the gf locus that causes an amino acid substitution in an invariant residue of a tomato homolog of the STAY-GREEN (SGR) protein of rice (Oryza sativa). Similarly, the cl mutation also carries an amino acid substitution at an invariant residue in a pepper homolog of SGR. Both GF and CL expression are highly induced at the onset of fruit ripening, coincident with the ripening-associated decline in chlorophyll. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that there are two distinct groups of SGR proteins in plants. The SGR subfamily is required for chlorophyll degradation and operates through an unknown mechanism. A second subfamily, which we have termed SGR-like, has an as-yet undefined function.