The development of a sugar cane reference transcriptome: evolutionary aspects and its application to the sucrose metabolism knowledge

• Grant number: 13/05171-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: June 01, 2013
• End date: June 17, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Plant Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Renato Vicentini dos Santos
• Grantee: Guilherme Targino Valente
• Host Institution: Centro de Biologia Molecular e Engenharia Genética (CBMEG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 08/58031-0 - Sugarcane energetic balance: a systems approach towards understanding regulation of sucrose metabolism and sugar signaling, AP.BIOEN.JP

Abstract

About 2/3 of world's sugar production came from sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) crop and this plant has the highest energy balance of any industrial crop. Despite of several researches have been developed focused on sugar metabolism and its regulations, the knowledge concerning its molecular mechanism still remain poorly understood. The genomic feature of modern sugar cultivar, such as the high genomic ploidy, has hindered the application of genomic tools in attempt to genetic improvement; on the other hand, in the last years data from genic expression have been obtained. Based on the increasing bioenergy exigency and the biological aspects for sucrose biosynthesis, the present proposal focus on the construction of a reference transcriptome for Saccharum genus, in which gene expression analysis among different transcriptomes as well as their evolutive aspects and studies based on protein-protein interaction networks will be performed. The main biological aspects to be investigated based on those approaches, will be the biosynthesis of sucrose and its regulation in sugar cane plants. All sequences required to develop this proposal are already available, thus, the present project will use bioinformatics analysis to attain its goals. We plan to link this proposal to the project already supported by FAPESP, which generated several required RNA-Seq. The expected results will contribute to create a reference for researchers in the bioenergy, quantitative genetics and functional genomics areas and will increase the knowledge of sucrose biosynthesis for Saccharum and other grass plants.