Two major classes of plant sugar transporters, sucrose and monosaccharide transporters, may be localized to tonoplast or plasma membrane. The monosaccharide transporters may also be localized in plastid. However, whether these transporters reside in other subcellular compartments remains unclear. We recently detected in apple fruit a 52 kD plasma membrane-localized monosaccharide transporter, and showed that this transporter may be functional in phloem unloading in the fruit. In this paper, we report that this monosaccharide transporter is also localized to sieve plate and plasmodesmal channel in apple fruit. The amount of this sieve plate- and plasmodesma-associated transporter changes during fruit development. This amount of the transporter expression may be altered in the phloem sieve elements but not in the parenchyma cells by a photoassimilate deficiency applied by the shoot girdling treatment, suggesting that the monosaccharide transporter of the special sub-cellular localization may be of biological significance.
