Identification and in silico characterization of sugarcane leaf promoters for biotecnological purposes

• Grant number: 20/07883-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2020
• End date: July 31, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Agronomy - Crop Science
• Principal Investigator: Michael dos Santos Brito
• Grantee: Alice Loureiro Martins
• Host Institution: Instituto de Ciência e Tecnologia (ICT). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São José dos Campos. São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The demand for renewable technologies to replace fossil fuels is currently in use of biofuels, such as biodiesel and bioethanol. A raw material for the use of these materials is of vegetable origin, mainly grasses such as corn and sugarcane, through the fermentation of the most sold sugar - such as starch and sucrose -, and other less usual, but of limited quality, such as those of lignocellulosic origin also known as second generation ethanol (E2G). Currently, cell recalcitrance, mainly due to the presence of a lignin, is a limiting factor for the production of E2G. As an alternative, identify a genetic engineering related to a degradation of cell wall elements, in regions rich in cellulose, such as leaves. In question, as promoter regions (limit portions of genes, with the capacity for modular expression of these ones) of leaf tissue-application genes present themselves as a possibility. Our objective consists in the identification and characterization using in silico analysis of tissue-specific promoters of sugarcane, and from genomic data and instruments to verify the efficiency of the sequences, as well as the construction of efficient primers for possible amplification, aiming to use these promoters to increase its efficiency within a modified organism, as a succession to national energy matrices.