Vias de percepção e sinalização de açúcares durante o crescimento e desenvolvimento da cana-de-açúcar (>i< Saccharum spp>/i<).

Abstract

The bioethanol derived from sugarcane (Saccharum spp) is a sustainable alternative energy source contributing to the mitigation of carbon emissions.Understanding how sugarcane coordinates the balance among carbon (C) assimilation, allocation, and usage is crucial to increasing crop production without expanding the planted areas. A complex signaling network capable of sensing C and energy levels and integrating them with plant growth and development includes the following players: hexokinase (HXK), trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P), the target of rapamycin complex 1 (TORC1), and sucrose-non-fermenting related protein kinase 1 (SnRK1). All these signaling pathways regulate and are regulated by sugars and orchestrate the C flux. However, it remains unclear how this occurs, especially for sugarcane, whose genome is polyploid and highly complex. Thus, the main objective of this thesis was to identify genes of the sugar sensors mentioned above in sugarcane (variety SP80-3280). For this, sequences of HXK, TORC1, SnRK1, and T6P metabolizing enzymes were identified and characterized in silico in sugarcane, for which only incomplete genome assemblies are available. Briefly, sequences of orthologous genes from model species and seven sugarcane genome and transcriptome databases were used for phylogenetic inference and identification of functional protein domains.