Sugarcane is one of the most important crops cultivated for the production of sugar and ethanol. In our previous studies, an innovative positive selection system for obtaining transgenic sugarcane, which utilized the E. coli-derived manA gene as the selectable marker and mannose as the selective agent, was developed and patented in China. In this paper, the influence of phosphomannose isomerase (PMI) overexpression on the key enzymes of both glycolysis and sucrose metabolism was investigated in transgenic sugarcane through the manA gene. Overexpressed PMI increased hexokinase activity by approximately 24 % compared with non-transgenic control plants, but pyruvate kinase (PK) activity was reduced by approximately 14 %. In comparison with the non-transgenic control plants, the activities of sucrose synthase, sucrose-phosphate synthase, and acid invertase were also modestly affected in the PMI-overexpressing transgenic plants, but no significant differences were observed at the stalk elongation and maturity stages. However, agronomic and technical traits were not affected by manA gene overexpression in the transgenic sugarcane. In conclusion, PMI overexpression significantly affected the hexokinase and PK activities by catalyzing the reversible interconversion between mannose-6-phosphate and fructose-6-phosphate, which is an intermediate of glycolysis. However, it had no significant effects on sucrose accumulation in sugarcane.
Keywords: Glycolysis; Phosphomannose isomerase (PMI); Sucrose accumulation/degradation; Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.); Transgenic plant.