Tomato fruit sampling for molecular study - (Mar/16/2012 )

Anybody has experienced on molecular study using tomato fruit? If so, can I know how did you collect your sample? Day after anthesis? Day after flowering? etc.... Did you tag/label all of your flowers and how did you tag them? Did you collect all of the tomato fruits or only fruits at the bottom or from the main stem? Does it matter the location of the fruits if I'm going to extract RNA and analyze the gene encode for seed protein? Someone please help me........

seed on Fri Mar 16 16:06:36 2012 said:

This depends on what you want to study...

I find it a rather strange question to be honest because if you have to ask this question, it means your research will face major problems.

Do you know the internationally accepted stages of tomatoes. (breaker red, red, ..) ? (check for example: http://www.lagorio.com/assets/pdf/lagorio-tomato-guide.pdf)

Depening on the stage you will find different RNA... so I am not sure what you are trying to do, but you need to think about what you are trying to do.

And yes, it does matter (or it can matter) where you take the sample, on top of the lower ones..
It can even matter which side of the plant if the lighting isnt equally distributed.

And then I am not even talking about infected plants vs non infected plants, GMO's (doesnt have to be done in the lab, could be selection itself over the years) vs regular ones etc...

I would advise you to find a good textbook on plantfysiology/tomatoes.