Parthenocarpic fruit is a very attractive trait for consumers and especially in eggplants where seeds can lead to browning of the flesh and bitterness. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying parthenocarpy in eggplant still remain unknown. Some auxin response factors have been previously shown in model species, such as Arabidopsis and tomato, to play an important role in such a process. Here, we have identified a natural parthenocarpic mutant and showed that ARF8 from eggplant (SmARF8), is down-regulated in buds compared to wild-type plants. Further characterization of SmARF8 showed that it is a nuclear protein and an active transcriptional regulator. We determined that amino acids 629-773 of SmARF8 act as the transcriptional activation domain, the C terminus of SmARF8 is the protein-binding domain, and that SmARF8 might form homodimers. Expression analysis in eggplant showed that SmARF8 is expressed ubiquitously in all tissues and organs and is responsive to auxin. Eggplant transgenic lines harboring RNA interference of SmARF8 exhibited parthenocarpy in unfertilized flowers, suggesting that SmARF8 negatively regulates fruit initiation. Interestingly, SmARF8-overexpressing Arabidopsis lines also induced parthenocarpy. These results indicate that SmARF8 could affect the dimerization of auxin/indole acetic acid repressors with SmARF8 via domains III and IV and thus induce fruit development. Furthermore, the introduction of SmARF8 full-length cDNA could partially complement the parthenocarpic phenotypes in Arabidopsis arf8-1 and arf8-4 mutants. Collectively, our results demonstrate that SmARF8 may act as a key negative regulator involved in parthenocarpic fruit development of eggplant. These findings give more insights into the conserved mechanisms leading to parthenocarpy in which auxin signaling plays a pivotal role, and provide potential target for eggplant breeding.
Keywords: Fruit development; Gene function; Overexpression; RNAi; Transcription factor.