A study conducted at the State University of Campinas provides a foundation for future research to confirm identification of the best candidate genes for biotech applications such as insertion into commercially valuable plants and development of sugarcane varieties resistant to environmental pressures. Credit: Luciana Rossini/IAC, Sugarcane Center, Ribeirão Preto
Key Points:
- Researchers studying sugarcane varieties identified orphan genes that may be responsible for the species’ resistance to environmental pressures.
- The team hopes the data can be leveraged for future biotech applications that comprise gene insertion into sugarcane and other plants.
In research that provides a foundation for future biotech applications, scientists in Brazil have identified orphan genes in Wild sugarcane, Saccharum spontaneum, a species with exceptional resistance to biotic stresses, such as nematodes, fungi, bacteria and other pests and diseases, as well as abiotic stresses, such as cold, drought, salinity and nutritionally deficient soil.
Orphan genes are genes found in a particular taxonomic group with no significant sequence similarity to genes from other lineages. The researchers were interested in S. spontaneum because of characteristics such as past whole-genome duplication events that resulted in several copies of the same gene. Previous evidence suggests orphan genes can originate in copies of pre-existing genes whose sequences change over time owing to mutations and eventually differ entirely from the original sequences.
Another possible explanation for the origin of orphan genes could be reorganization of genomic regions that do not encode genes, frequently seen in organisms with complex genomes, such as sugarcane.
In the study published in Frontiers in Plant Science, the researchers identified parts of the genome of S. spontaneum that have no similarities to genes in any other organism. They believe these genes may be responsible for physiological traits or properties specific to the species.
“As these plants evolved, some genes were expressed to a greater or lesser extent in response to various types of abiotic stress, particularly cold. This may mean they’re regulated as a result of these stresses,” said the study’s first author Cláudio Benício Cardoso-Silva.
While Cardoso-Silva and his team can’t yet categorically link the orphan genes to the creation of more stress-tolerant sugarcane, they say the fact that the genes regulated under conditions of stress serves as a signal that they may play an important role.
The next step for the team is to investigate how orphan genes behave when undergoing various kinds of stress compared with non-stressed plants. Once the best candidate genes are confirmed, biotech applications involving their insertion into commercially valuable plants can be studied, leading to the future possibility of developing sugarcane varieties—or other plants—more resistant to environmental pressures.
“We shone a spotlight on this possibility for anyone who wants to use the data in the article to continue the research, or for scientists who work with gene transformation and editing, which is a different research field, to choose one or two genes as candidates and do the validation,” said Cardoso-Silva.
Information provided by Ricardo Muniz | Agência FAPESP.