Molecular analyzes of the response of sugarcane roots to drought stress

• Grant number: 13/02894-9
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): May 01, 2013
• Effective date (End): April 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Plant Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Menossi Teixeira
• Grantee: Giovanna Vieira Guidelli
• Home Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Sugarcane is a crop of worldwide economic importance, acting mainly as raw material in the manufacture of sugar and ethanol. Sugarcane crops suffer various types of biotic and abiotic stresses, being the drought one of the major factors that affects their productivity. The drought acts on plant varieties of several ways, affecting their shoots and root system. The roots play an important role in the maintaining of the plant functions in stress conditions, so that their properties have a large influence on plant response to water deficit. However, the knowledge about changes in gene expression in sugarcane roots subjected to water stress is still very limited, although it is an important step towards the identification of genes with the potential to produce plants more tolerant to drought. Thus, this project aims to identify the changes in the sugarcane roots transcriptome triggered by water deficit. For this, it will be used RNAseq and among the identified genes will be selected one for functional analyzes using transgenic plants and other molecular analyzes.