Expression Analysis of Two Genes Coding for Trehalose-6-Phosphate Synthase (TPS), in Sugarcane (<i>Saccharum</i> spp.) under Water Stress

Abstract

The accumulation of trehalose (α-D-glucopyranosyl-[1,1]-α-D-glucopyranoside), a sugar with osmoprotectant properties, is very common in microorganisms, invertebrates and in resurrection plants. However, in the majority of higher plants, it is found in trace amounts. Trehalose is synthesized from the UDP-glucose and glucose-6-phosphate in a twostep process with two enzymes, trehalose-6-phosphate synthase or TPS (EC 2.4.1.15 and EC 2.4.1.36) and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase or TPP (EC 3.1.3.12). The trehalose-6-phosphate synthase and its product of the trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P) are probable signaling molecules in the carbohydrate metabolism, contributing to enhancing the plants tolerance to water stress. Water scarcity is one of the most important factors that influence productivity in sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) and it activates a cascade of metabolic events and necessary morphologic changes for the survival of the plant under stress. Here we show the in silico expression study of TPS in different libraries from the SUCEST project. Our results showed that the TPS genes are present in all tissues and that they are divided into two subfamilies (class I and II). It is shown that STPS1 belongs to the class I, therefore, it does not have an active phosphatase (TPP) domain, whereas, the STPS2 has an active TPP domain (class II) determined by the presence of phosphatase boxes. Expression analyses based on the semi-quantitative method of the reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) show that the STPS1 gene is up-regulated in the tolerant cultivar under stress and down-regulated in susceptible plants. The STPS2 gene does not show considerable variations in the expression levels under the same treatments. The discovery of active genes such as STPS1 and STPS2 in plants under water stress, contributes for the concerning about the cascade of responses in plants under water deficit and points out to target genes for plant breeding.

Trehalose and (iso)floridoside production under desiccation stress in red alga Porphyra umbilicalis and the genes involved in their synthesis

“…The expression of Pum4637 was upregulated in response to desiccation, which also corresponded to the increase of trehalose content under desiccation; thus, we propose that Pum4637 is the most promising candidate for TPS enzyme catalyzing the trehalose synthesis. The upregulation of Pum4637 was consistent with TPS upregulation in wide range of species, such as bacteria Bradyrhizobium japonicum (Cytryn et al 2007) and Spermatophytina (Nepomuceno et al 2002, Jiang et al 2010, Junior et al 2013, Xu et al 2017) under different stresses. The up-regulation of the Pum4637 gene reached a peak of about 3.5-fold at 2 h drying, which did not correspond to the changes of trehalose that peaked at half-hour drying and stayed almost stable during desiccation process and rehydration.…”

Genotyping by sequencing provides new insights into the diversity of Napier grass (Cenchrus purpureus) and reveals variation in genome-wide LD patterns between collections

“…The location was used to identify the closest gene aligned with the markers and the corresponding annotation information used to label 2,256 of the SNP markers. Although the majority of the annotation queries were uncharacterized proteins, there were some markers that aligned with known genes involved in economically important traits such as lipoxygenase 63 and mitogen-activated protein kinase 64 which are associated with disease resistance, and, trehalose 6-phosphate 65 , transcription elongation factor 66 and auxin efflux carrier protein 67 which are involved in drought tolerance.…”

Genetic manipulation of trehalose‐6‐phosphate synthase results in changes in the soluble sugar profile in transgenic sugarcane stems

“…Putative sugarcane TPS sequences were identified by BLAST homology searches of the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database ( www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov ) and a partial sugarcane TPS cDNA sequence ( SoTPS1 ) (NCBI accession number: EU761244.1; Nicolau et al, 2013 ) as search reference. Isolated partial SoTPS gene fragments were extended by rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE; Sambrook & Russell, 2001 ), where cDNA synthesized from RNA isolated from leaf tissue from Saccharum sp.…”

“…650 μmol/g FW) in the stem (Bosch, 2005 ; Welbaum & Meinzer, 1990 ; Zhang et al, 2006 ). Additionally, transcripts of putative TPS and TPP genes in sugarcane have been confirmed in different tissue‐ and genotypes (Bosch, 2005 ; Hu et al, 2020 ; McCormick et al, 2008 ; Nicolau et al, 2013 ; Thirugnanasambandam et al, 2017 ). Furthermore, Zhang et al ( 2006 ) expressed a fungal trehalose synthase ( TSase ) gene, which encodes an enzyme that synthesizes trehalose directly from glucose and glucose 1‐phosphate, in sugarcane.…”