新鲜水果营养丰富，富含大量维生素、矿物质和膳食纤维，但其采后腐烂十分严重，在我国平均损失率高达20%至25%，经济损失巨大。由于病原菌是引起新鲜果实腐烂的主要原因，以往果实病害控制的研究多集中于抑制病原菌生存与阻遏病原菌侵染等方面。对果实抗病改善及其分子机制的研究报道较为有限。果实抗病基因转录的主要启动元件，ERFs，在果实采后防御机制中的作用尚不清楚。为明确该类转录因子在生防菌改善番茄果实抗病中的作用机制，本项目拟通过iTRAQ、GFP定位和Chip-Seq技术并结合生物信息学分析，在蛋白表达、转录因子与启动子互作层面上系统研究抗病相关ERFs和其抗病基因调控网络及抗病启动子互作机制，并通过RNA干扰技术探索ERFs在番茄果实抗病中的生物学功能。研究结果不仅对明确番茄果实抗病改善机制和采后低损耗储藏机制具有重要的理论意义，而且还将为延长新鲜水果贮藏保鲜和开发新型病害防治技术提供新的信息。

Fresh fruit is an essential component of our daily diet due to its nutrition- and minerals-rich. However, losses caused by various impact factors accounted for nearly 20-25 percent of the total production in China, led to a huge economic loss. Postharvest disease pathogens are one of the major factors, and various researchers had put their attention on killing pathogen fungus and reducing its invasion chances. Little is known about how the activator of defense related genes, transcription factor ERFs, improves fruit resistance against postharvest diseases. Then, the aim of the proposed project is to investigate the roles of ERFs between biological control yeast and Lycopersicum esculentum, and the network among ERFs and defense genes. Specifically, the objectives of this project were to (1) Characterize the proteome of Lycopersicum esculentum treated by biocontrol yeast Cryptococcus laurentii, and finding the over expressed ERFs, defense related proteins and their functional motifs within database PLACE; (2) Indentify the ERFs controlled DNA fragment with methods of ‘ChIP-sequencing’, defining the binding motifs between ERFs and the promoters, and mapping these promoters to defense related genes within the genome of tomato fruit; (3) Varify the biological roles of ERFs in Lycopersicum esculentum through ‘knocking-down’ their expression with methods of RNAi. The results of this project not only will lay a foundation on how ERFs activated disease resistance in postharvest tomato fruit, and increase knowledge how the ways REFs involved in the low cost defense mechanism, but also is critical for prolonging postharvest fruit storage and developing new safely disease control strategy.