Publications by authors named "Prathima P Thirugnanasambandam"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the gene expression and regulation in commercial sugarcane hybrids derived from two progenitor species, focusing on their transcriptome through advanced long read sequencing technology.
  • - Analysis found that the hybrid exhibits a greater abundance of transcripts related to important agricultural traits like sugar transport, stress response, and biomass production compared to its progenitors.
  • - The findings suggest that there are many unique gene isoforms in both the hybrid and its progenitors, indicating potential for improving modern hybrids by incorporating beneficial genes from the parent species.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on the Plant Nuclear Factor (NF-Y), which consists of three subfamilies (NF-YA, NF-YB, and NF-YC) that play different roles in plant development and stress responses.
  • In sugarcane, researchers identified 51 NF-Y genes and mapped them across all 10 chromosomes, revealing conserved protein domains and distinct phylogenetic relationships with related species like sorghum.
  • Expression analysis indicated that certain NF-Y genes are significantly involved in drought tolerance, with higher expression levels found in roots and leaves of both sugarcane and its drought-tolerant wild relative.
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Unlabelled: Drought is a major factor which reduces cane growth and productivity. In the present study, we sequenced drought susceptible (V1) and drought tolerant (V2) sugarcane varieties using high-throughput miRNA deep sequencing method to study the regulation of gene expression by miRNAs during drought stress in sugarcane. A total of 1224 conserved miRNAs which belong to 89 miRNA families were identified and 38% of the differentially regulated miRNAs were common for both varieties.

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Background: Sugarcane accumulates very high levels of sucrose in the culm. Elucidation of the molecular mechanisms that allows such high sucrose synthesis and accumulation (up to 650 mM) is made difficult by the complexity of the highly polyploid genome. Here we report the use of RNA Seq data to characterize the sucrose synthase (SuSy) genes expressed in the transcriptome of the mature sugarcane plant.

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Reference genome sequences have become key platforms for genetics and breeding of the major crop species. Sugarcane is probably the largest crop produced in the world (in weight of crop harvested) but lacks a reference genome sequence. Sugarcane has one of the most complex genomes in crop plants due to the extreme level of polyploidy.

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Sugarcane biomass has been used for sugar, bioenergy and biomaterial production. The majority of the sugarcane biomass comes from the culm, which makes it important to understand the genetic control of biomass production in this part of the plant. A meta-transcriptome of the culm was obtained in an earlier study by using about one billion paired-end (150 bp) reads of deep RNA sequencing of samples from 20 diverse sugarcane genotypes and combining assemblies from different assemblers and different settings.

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Background: Sugarcane is a major crop of the tropics cultivated mainly for its high sucrose content. The crop is genetically less explored due to its complex polyploid genome. Sucrose synthesis and accumulation are complex processes influenced by physiological, biochemical and genetic factors, and the growth environment.

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Background: Despite the economic importance of sugarcane in sugar and bioenergy production, there is not yet a reference genome available. Most of the sugarcane transcriptomic studies have been based on Saccharum officinarum gene indices (SoGI), expressed sequence tags (ESTs) and de novo assembled transcript contigs from short-reads; hence knowledge of the sugarcane transcriptome is limited in relation to transcript length and number of transcript isoforms.

Results: The sugarcane transcriptome was sequenced using PacBio isoform sequencing (Iso-Seq) of a pooled RNA sample derived from leaf, internode and root tissues, of different developmental stages, from 22 varieties, to explore the potential for capturing full-length transcript isoforms.

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Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is one of the highest biomass-producing plant and the best lignocellulosic feedstock for ethanol production. To achieve more efficient conversion of biomass to ethanol, a better understanding of the main factors affecting biomass recalcitrance is needed.

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