ABSTRACT
The ability of flowering plants to prosper throughout their long evolution has always been strongly dependent on the constant development of strategies to lure pollinators. There are a few studies in the literature characterizing rose floral scent volatiles. Clearly, rose represents an excellent source for the identification of genes from different scent-related pathways. However, the lack of an established genetic framework, including characterized mutants and the recalcitrance of rose to genetic manipulation, makes the application of forward and reverse genetic approaches extremely cumbersome. To prove the function of the candidate fragrance genes, lysates from Escherichia coli expressing these putative scent genes or transgenic plants expressing the genes are used to test the associated enzymatic activities. To complement the genomic data, a rose petal proteome was analyzed. To create the infrastructure needed to explore the relationships between sequences and phenotypes in rose, expression profiling was performed using microarray analyses.
