Identification of early fruit development reference genes in plum

An RNAseq study of early fruit development and stone development in plum, Prunus domestica, was mined to identify sets of genes that could be used to normalize expression studies in early fruit development. The expression values of genes previously identified from Prunus as reference genes were first extracted and found to vary considerably in endocarp tissue relative to whole fruit tissue. Nine other genes were chosen that varied less than 2-fold amongst the 20 RNAseq libraries of early fruit development and endocarp tissues. These gene were tested on a series of developmental plum fruit samples to determine if any could be used as a reference gene in the analyses of fruit-based tissues in plum. The three most stable genes as determined using RefFinder were IPGD (imidazole glycerol-phosphate dehydratase), HAM1 (histone acetyltransferase) and SNX1 (sorting nexin 1). These were further tested to analyze genes expressed differentially in endocarp tissue between normal and minimal endocarp cultivars. To determine the universality of those nine genes as fruit development reference genes, three other data sets of RNAseq from peach and apple were analyzed to determine the reference gene expression. Multiple genes exhibited tissue specific patterns of expression while one gene, the SNX1, emerged as possessing a universal pattern between the Rosaceae species, at all developmental stages, and tissue types tested. The results suggest that the use of existing RNAseq data to identify standard genes can provide stable reference genes for a specific tissues or experimental conditions under exploration.