Melon (Cucumis melo L.) is an important horticultural crop worldwide. Ethylene regulates the ripening process and affects the ripening rate. To screen genes that are differentially expressed at the burst of ethylene climacteric in melon fruit, we performed suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) to generate forward and reverse libraries, for which we sequenced 439 and 445 clones, respectively. Our BLAST analysis showed that the genes from the 2 libraries were involved in metabolism, signal transduction, cell structure, transcription, translation, and defense. Six genes were analyzed by qRT-PCR during the differential developmental stage of melon fruit. Our results provide new insight into the understanding of climacteric ripening of melon fruit.