A Global View of Sugarcane Transcriptome Mapped in Sorghum Genome

Sugarcane is an important tropical crop of the Andropogoneae tribe. Modern cultivars have a complex genome organization. Sugarcane and sorghum genomes appeared to be closely related. Indeed, in as little as 5 million years since Saccharum and Sorghum diverged from a common ancestor. The availability of the sorghum genome sequence provides the opportunity to analyze the similarity and differences between these crop plants at a global genomic level. In the present study, we map sugarcane transcriptome obtained from six genotypes against the sorghum genome. The transcriptome was assembled using ~600 millions of reads (72 bp) obtained by Illumina GA IIx platform, resulting in 72,269 transcripts. The transcripts were then mapped to each one of the sorghum chromosomes, with at least 70% coverage and a maximum intron size of 15 kb, using SIM4 software. A total of 41,525 transcripts were mapped against sorghum genome. The number of sugarcane transcripts mapped into sorghum chromosomes (Chr) ranged of 1,984 transcripts (Chr05) to 7,332 transcripts (Chr01). Considering only the transcripts that align against the sorghum genome, a total of 20,924 transcripts had hits with different sorghum protein. This information can aid in studies that aimed the development of genetic maps using functional molecular markers.