Sugarcane transcriptom

Abstract

The production of sugar and alcohol in Brazil could greatly benefit from the introduction of varieties with a high level of sucrose and more resistant to biotic and abiotic stresses. The establishment of such varieties, using traditional techniques of genetic improvement, is a lengthy process. The process could be speeded up if the target genes for the production of the improvement could be identified. The recent sequencing of 237 thousand sugarcane ESTs (Expressed Sequence Tags) offers an opportunity to study their levels of expression on a large scale, employing the microarrays of cDNA technology. The analysis of the transcriptom of contrasting varieties of high and low levels of sugar, using DNA chips, could indicate the genes involved in the accumulation of sucrose throughout the maturation of the plant, pointing to the route for the genetic manipulation of this grass species. In addition to this, a global analysis of the transcriptom of this plant subjected to insect attacks, to interactions with endophytic bacteria, to hydric stress, among other factors, would be extremely valuable to the improvement program. This project aims to use the technology of cDNA microarrays to analyze the levels of 6,528 transcripts in contrasting varieties of sugarcane for the accumulation of sugar and subjected to the conditions mentioned earlier. The project envisages furthermore, the making of nylon membranes containing 3 thousand clones, which will be made available to researchers interested in analyzing the response of this plant to other phenomena. (AU)