In most plant tissues, neoxanthin is the predominant carotenoid with a 9-cis conformation and is considered the most likely precursor of ABA.Neoxanthin is derived through the opening of an epoxy ring in violaxanthin,followed by an intramolecular rearrangement to form an allenic bond. Alleniccarotenoids, such as neoxanthin, are among the most abundant carotenoids in nature. Therefore, an understanding of their synthesis and functions in photosynthetic organisms is of considerable interest. Two genes that encode neoxanthin synthases (NSY) have been identified in potato and tomato (1, 7).The NSY gene products are similar to lycopene cyclases from various plants and a capsanthin-capsorubin synthase from pepper. Transient expression in tobacco and in vitro assays both demonstrated that the tomato NSY was capable
of converting violaxanthin to neoxanthin (7). However, the NSY gene corresponds to the old-gold mutant in tomato, which accumulates higher levels of lycopene due to the loss of a fruit-specific lycopene