Abstract
Recently, interest on lignin research has increased significantly since several studies have identified this biopolymer as the main factor responsible for the recalcitrance of cell walls to cellulose-to-glucose conversion for downstream applications, such as the production of biofuels and bio-based materials. Despite recent advances, most of our current knowledge of cell wall formation and lignin metabolism is primarily derived from dicotyledoneous species. However, the molecular mechanisms controlling different aspects of lignin metabolism in grasses, such as transcriptional regulation, biosynthesis and polymerization, remains largely unknown, despite of the economic importance of this group of plants. Therefore, comprehensive and systematic studies are needed to unravel specific characteristics of secondary cell wall formation and lignin metabolism in grasses. The present project aims to develop model systems of sorghum and use them in a systems biology approach based on transcriptomics and metabolomics to correlate changes in cell wall composition with changes in gene expression, with a major focus on lignin and phenolic metabolism. The proposed model systems are: i) the elongating internode system, and ii) inducible cell suspension culture for tracheary element differentiation. Both systems will be characterized for lignin deposition and phenolic profiling and subsequently used in high-throughput transcriptomic analysis using RNAseq. Finally, the transcriptomic data will be used to generate a co-expression network and a database of co-expressed genes, in order to select candidate genes that potentially play a role in secondary cell wall formation and lignin biosynthesis in grasses. The obtained knowledge might be very helpful for future biotechnological strategies to reduce biomass recalcitrance in bioenergy crops, such as sugarcane. (AU)
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