RGAs sugarcane expression profile during infection with various pathogens

Abstract

During the course of investigation of the pathosystem smut-sugarcane using a transcriptomic approach, resistance gene analogs were identified as differentially expressed (Schaker et al., 2016). A detailed analysis revealed that some of these genes are strong candidates to be associated with disease establishment in sugarcane. This previous work had provided a set of PacBio sequences of full length sugarcane transcripts and a second set of short length transcripts obtained by Illumina sequencing. This present project is to develop a database containing a combination of these sequencing data combining Illumina and PacBio sequenced to best define a set of sugarcane transcripts using the variety 'RB925345' as a model. The data will then be used to search potential copies and/or alleles of RGAs. The results will be validated by using qPCR techniques to identify gene copy number and also to provide an expression profile of each RGAs when the plant is challenged with different pathogens (Sporisorium scitaminuem, Leifsonia xyli, Xanthomonas albilineans) and endophytes (Gluconacetobacter). Questions that will be answered: 1) Is there a specific combination of RGAs expression for each pathogen detection?; 2) Is there a common path regarding RGA expression?; 3) Are there differences among RGAs expression in sugarcane varieties known as susceptible or resistant to smut or showing intermediate resistance? (AU)