Construction of transcription related database of C4 grass plant, Sorghum bicolor and its application

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K07265
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: System genome science
• Research Institution: Institute of Physical and Chemical Research
• Principal Investigator: Makita Yuko 国立研究開発法人理化学研究所, 環境資源科学研究センター, 研究員 (80443026)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: トランスクリプトーム / ソルガム / RNA-seq / CAGE / gDB-seq / C4草本植物 / データベース

Outline of Final Research Achievements

C4 grass plant, sorghum ranks fifth in the global cereal production and shows strong environmental stress tolerance against drought, heat, salinity and flooding. Sorghum is also used for bioethanol production. Although the genome sequence was determined in 2009, it is still lacking the other bioinformatics resources. In this project, we updated our sorghum database to apply for the high sugar and high biomass researches and elucidation of mechanism of environmental stress tolerance. We obtained RNA-seq, CAGE and gDB-seq data from two different sugar accumulation strains, grain sorghum and sweet sorghum. Comparison of these two strains, we obtained the expression difference on the sugar transporters. Also, CAGE data suggested tissue specific transcription start sites and different transcriptional regulations. All the transcriptome data and constructed networks are accessible from MOROKOSHI database (http://sorghum.riken.jp).

Free Research Field

植物インフォマティクス

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

ソルガムは世界五大穀物の一つであり、環境ストレスにも強いため、バイオエタノール生産植物として注目されている。ゲノム配列は公開されているものの、それ以外のリソースに著しく不足している。そこで高糖性・高バイオマス研究への応用や、環境ストレス耐性メカニズムの解明のためのリソース整備として、ソルガムのトランスクリプトーム情報基盤の整備・公開を行なう。
本研究では特に、糖蓄積器官の異なる２系統の発現比較を行